EUROCHAMBRES assessed how the European Commission applied the SME test by analyzing 13 impact assessments (IAs) on legislative initiatives of relevance to SMEs, such as geo-blocking, posting of workers and insolvency, published in the period of July 2015 - January 2017.

One of the main findings was despite the strong emphasis by the current Commission on better regulation and on the economic importance of SMEs, less than one-third of the analysed IAs performed the SME test to a good level. The researchers recommend that the Commission’s guidelines on how to conduct the SME test should be more rigorously applied by the relevant services, among other recommendations.