With all the nonsense packaged as news that you are subjected to – or, more correctly, bombarded with – on a daily basis, it is quite easy for you to get sucked in and to then not see the forest for the trees. You might be more familiar with the British adage, not see the wood for the trees, rather than this American one.

Speaking of the British – contrary to popu- lar belief, South Africa by no means has a monopoly on economic turbulence. Europe has its own economic challenges; these are captured in the portmanteau Brexit, which effortlessly evokes contradictory and highly emotive sentiments. Perhaps we should come up with one that encapsulates what is happening in present-day South Africa.

If you have a business that trades with Europe or plans to do so and are not that preoccupied with Brexit, well, you might well be missing something – the Enterprise Europe Network (EEN).

It is quite possible that you have not even heard of it. If so, you might well want to call on the Delegation of the European Union to South Africa, which functions as an embassy representing the 28 member States of the European Union (EU) in South Africa. You can also call on an EU member State’s embassy, such as the embassy of Finland. You might want to take a moment to consider which countries are members of the EU, inclusive of their overseas and dependent territories.

Alternatively, you could read up on the EEN, which serves to assist businesses in innovating and growing internationally. The EEN was launched by the European Commission (EC) in 2008 and is cofinanced under the EU’s programme for the competi- tiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It is under the responsibility of the EC’s Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs and is managed by the executive agency for SMEs.

The EEN is active in more than 60 countries worldwide and is the world’s largest support network for SMEs with international ambitions. The network brings together 3 000 experts from more than 600 member organi- sations, which, it is said, are all renowned for their excellence in business support. While individual businesses cannot become EEN members, they can still benefit from its services.

EEN member organisations include tech- nology poles, innovation support organisations, universities and research institutes, regional development organisations, and chambers of commerce and industry.

There are essentially three categories of business services on offer. Businesses can get personalised advice to grow faster through tailor-made support. They could find business partners, through international matchmaking services, while considering any of the 10 000 tech and business offers. Through the last category – innovate – businesses can discover how to take innovative ideas to commercial success.

Just to expand on the advice for international growth, the EEN offers a wide range of services in regulatory areas and market intelligence: compliance with EU regulations and standards; access to international markets (market intelligence and capacity building); international public contracts – access to cross-border procurement and EU tender opportunities; national and regional finance and funding – identification of sources of finance and investor- readiness training; EU funding schemes and application support; intellectual property rights (IPR), including patents and IPR applications and exploitation strategies; energy and resource efficiency (identification of technologies and finance opportunities); and management improvement (capacity building).

In the instance of the EEN’s innovation support services for business, this is based on an assessment of the needs and the development phase of the business, which include information on innovation-related policies, legislation and support programmes; links with local innovation stakeholders; and information about access to local sources of funding/support. The EEN’s experts can provide one-to-one services to support innovation capacity building.

To learn more, visit https://een.ec.europa.eu