SMEs represent the economic backbone for both countries and are the major job creators in the cross-border area. As the 2018 SBA Fact Sheets of the European Commission for both countries demonstrate, SMEs account for 65.2 % of value added and 75.4 % of employment for Bulgaria and 63.6 % of value added and 85.2 % of employment for Greece respectively, exceeding the EU average of 56.8 % and 66.4 %. Those figures emphasize the importance of SME entrepreneurship and make even more prominent the problem of a lack of sufficient funding schemes and solutions for business in the area. Both countries have struggled with the implementation of the Small Business Act with Greece being among the weakest performing countries in access to finance ‘second chance’ environment. Bulgaria shows a performance that is below the EU average, again mainly due to poor access to finance and investment capital It becomes evident that SMEs are facing major obstacles in ensuring financial capacity. Also financing from the private sector has been plagued by the ongoing after-effects of the economic crisis, that occurred mainly on Greek soil but created a spill-over effect in the cross-border region, where the regional economies on both sides had created long-established and complex interlinks. Overall Bu4Inno objective is to develop an improved entrepreneurial support system for agricultural SMEs in the cross-border area which is primarily devoted to the agricultural sector with a great variety of goods being produced whilst a large portion of the populace is either wholly or partially involved in their production.
