New EU directive 'good news for SMEs'
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Published On 30 April 2007 at 09:11:51
Last week's decision by the European Parliament to speed up the process of cross-border payments in the internal market will make life easier for UK small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).That's the opinion of the Forum of Private Businesses, who welcomed what it called "a landmark decision" to adopt the Payments Services Directive (PSD). The move will make it easier for SMEs to receive money from customers and suppliers in other EU countries.
"An estimated 40 per cent of business insolvencies are caused by late payment," said the FPB's EU spokesman Martin Smith. "The FPB has fought this trend hard, winning small businesses the right to charge interest on commercial debt.
"While this directive does not explicitly address debtors who don't pay up, what it does do is speed up the receipt of the money when they do pay up, and also take away a potential excuse foreign debtors may use for not paying."
After the vote by European Parliament, member states of the EU will have until December 2009 to incorporate the directive into their national law.
"The implementation of directives is always key, and something that the Commission often forget once they finally get a proposal through," Mr Smith warned.
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