Promoting environmental compliance and green business practices in small and medium-sized enterprises
The „Environmental Policy Toolkit for Greening Small and Medium Enterprises in the EU Eastern Partnership Countries“ produced by the EU-funded programme ‘Greening Economies in the European Union's Eastern Neighbourhood’ (EaP GREEN) was released at the end of April this year with the intention to promote environmental compliance and green business practices of SMEs in the six countries of Eastern Partnership, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.
The Toolkit covers three categories of environmental policy instruments:
- regulatory simplification and incentives
- information-based tools (both offering advice and guidance to SMEs and information about their environmental performance for the public); and
- financial and economic incentives
The EaP GREEN experts discovered that most of the SMEs in the analyzed countried implemented energy and water efficiency measures. However, according to the survey results, the implementation of measures was mainly driven by the prices of energy, water and raw materials.
The financial support for the project was provided by the European Union, the joint implementation is carried out by OECD, UNECE, UNEP, and UNIDO.
Source: EU Neighbourhood Info Centre 25 April 2016
EaPGreen Website