ES struktūrinė parama verslo plėtrai – regioninės politikos instrumentas ; EU structural support for business development – the instrument of regional policy
Over the years, the various enlargements have transformed the EU into a more and more heterogeneous group of countries with significant economic imbalances. The financial instrument of the EU regional policy – structural support is used to seek for the economic and social cohesion of regions. It is characteristic for small and medium sized enterprises to act at regional, not national or international, level. The aim of this article is to analyse one kind of structural support, – that is support for business development. The object of the article is the priorities of 1 objective and 2 objective regional development programs of 15 Member states for the programming period of 2000-2006 and Lithuanian Single programming document. The review of the results of structural support for business development during the programming period of 1994-1999 enables to analyse the opportunities for business enterprises to get structural support and to evaluate the impact of structural support for business on region's development. The structural support is designated to increase the competitiveness of enterprises. Direct and indirect support is rendered to business enterprises: financial support for enterprises, financial engineering, business consulting services, innovation and new technologies, special training services, improvement of physical infrastructure, and etc. Financial support for business development helped many enterprises to implement planned projects and develop a system of services for their businesses. It also created and saved many jobs. Competitive enterprises are able to stand the competition in the single market. As a result, successful activities of enterprises influence GDP growth, it also provides stable income for workers. This leads to economic and social cohesion of regions.[.].