Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs

Responsibilities

The Directorate General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs is working to uphold and manage the Single Market for goods and services and to strengthen its governance. Its work helps ensure an open, seamless and resilient internal market, which is one of the cornerstones of European integration.

The DG supports the competitiveness, growth and resilience of the EU economy, while facilitating a transformative recovery from the coronavirus crisis. It focuses on strengthening the leadership of European industries across different industrial ecosystems, by leveraging the power of the Single Market and addressing strategic dependencies in our supply chains. In addition, it implements policies that sustain entrepreneurship and growth, in particular to the benefit of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), including facilitating access to funding and to global markets for EU companies.

The DG also leads efforts on digitisation and decarbonisation of European industry and SMEs. It contributes to the objective of turning the EU into a greener, more digital and more resilient economy, in line with the Commission’s priorities to build an economy that works for people and a Europe fit for the digital age.

DG GROW manages the implementation of the Single Market Programme (4.2 billion EUR from 2021 to 2027), which aims to strengthen the governance of the Single Market. This improved market surveillance will help to make the internal market work better including boosting the competitiveness of businesses, in particular SMEs. The Single Market Programme will develop effective European standards and advance international financial and non-financial reporting and auditing standards. It will also further raise consumer protection standards, maintaining high levels of food safety. DG GROW also manages parts of the Programme for Research and Innovation, Horizon Europe.

The DG's work is organised around the 14 industrial ecosystems, the new paradigm integrating policy perspective across goods and services and the coordination hubs for cross cutting issues within the DG such as “green”, “digitalisation” or “standards”.

External bodies

While DG Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs maintains policy control of its support programmes, financial management is largely taken care of by:

• European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA) which implements the European Innovation Council and manages other EU programmes focusing on SME support, innovation and the single market including parts of the Single Market Programme.
• European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA) manages European programmes and initiatives to help rebuild a post-COVID-19 Europe at its heart, which will be greener, more digital, more resilient and better fit for the current and forthcoming challenges, including parts of Horizon Europe, Single Market Programme and Digital Europe Programme.

DG Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs also supervises certain regulatory agencies:

• the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) which implements the EU’s legislation on chemical products
• the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) which is the trademark and designs registry of the European Union

Single market website