European craft policy needs to be rethought. Confartigianato and Cna have no doubts about this, the trade associations that have indicated the road and priorities before the Productive Activities commission of Montecitorio, in relation to the EU package 'The new European industrial strategy'. For Confartigianato the premise is that the European strategy it must be the occasion to carry out the reforms that allow the Italian entrepreneurial system to unfold its potential, focusing on manufacturing quality, digitization, environmental sustainability, a more circular economy that values durable and repairable goods. And above all, Confartigianato asks for both enhanced the strategic role of micro and small enterprises and craft businesses, also through targeted policies for the Green transition and by eliminating the barriers that prevent entrepreneurs from exploiting the full potential of the single market.
At European and Italian level, Confartigianato therefore calls for the concrete application of two fundamental principles: that of "one in one out", whereby for each new regulation introduced it must replace an existing one, and of the "prohibition of gold plating", ie the introduction of charges and obligations higher than those required by the European regulations being implemented in the various legal systems. Furthermore, according to Confartigianato, the EU representative for SMEs must assume greater importance in the definition, promotion and monitoring of European policies for SMEs. Then he considers it essential to introduce the principle of mandatory indication of the origin of provenance of non-EU countries to enhance European productions and the supply chains connected to them and protect and inform consumers.
For the CNA, on the other hand, a roadmap should be defined in which to include short, medium and long-term temporal action objectives, also identifying which tools to include in support of small and medium-sized enterprises in the EU recovery programme, essentially a more ambitious "Strategy for a global EU policy on SMEs", developed over a longer term period. In this context, it assumes particular importance the issue of governance of this path, and greater involvement of SME representative organizations is needed.
In particular, Cna identifies three priorities:
1) improve the integration and functioning of the single market, accelerating the processes of regulatory harmonization within the EU,
2) support the industry in the process green and digital transformation,
3) new policies capable of intervening positively on the objective differences between micro, small and medium enterprises, starting from an in-depth analysis of the composition of the productive fabric in Europe.
