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Starting from the role of SMEs in the economic development of countries, but also from the current challenges generated by the COVID-19 pandemic, through this paper we aimed to identify the changes and challenges faced by SMEs from the European Union countries in the current context. SMEs and entrepreneurship have been severely affected by the economic changes caused by the pandemic. Thus, we aim to analyse and debate the changes that have taken place in the entrepreneurial environment but also the challenges generated by the pandemic. To perform the analysis, we use data from the European Commission and International Monetary Fund, and we compare the data before the pandemic and from pandemic times to identify the changes that have taken place. As the method of analysis, we use the quantitative analysis running a Vector Autoregression Model (VAR) and impulse response. Our results highlight the high negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on entrepreneurship and especially on SMEs. In this turbulent environment, whoever adapts to change as easily as possible survives and so small and early-stage businesses have to adapt to face the challenges if they want to continue their activity. The added value of our study comes from conducting an extensive analysis on a large number of countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper aims to investigate how the changes in macroeconomic conditions and the quality of institutions affect the level of entrepreneurial activity in 18 European Union countries, over the period 2002-2016. Using panel-data estimation techniques, we alternatively analyzed the effects of some macroeconomic and institutional framework related factors (in particular, the quality of institutions) on entrepreneurial activity level, proxied by the total early-stage entrepreneurial activity rate, nascent entrepreneurship rate, and new business ownership rate. The results of our empirical analysis show that the economic situation of EU countries and the quality of institutions (reflected in our study through competitiveness, economic freedom, and governance quality) have a significant effect on early-stage entrepreneurs and for some variables the sign of the relationship depends on the age of the business. Our findings may be of interest to policy makers in developing effective policies contributing to enhancing the entrepreneurial capacity in different countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The major importance of entrepreneurship for economic growth, competitiveness, creating jobs and innovation is widely recognised. The objectives of our paper are to realize a comparative analyze of the characteristics of entrepreneurship in the EU countries, as well as to identify the perceptions about it. For our analysis we use the values for the key indicators obtained from data base and reports of Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. Also, in order to realize the comparison we use the classification of EU countries according to their development level. The results obtained show that there are important differences between the EU countries regarding entrepreneurial activity, but also among the countries in the same group. The countries with a higher economic development have a better entrepreneurial environment then those less developed. Regarding the perception about entrepreneurship, our results show that almost half of working age population from EU observe good opportunities in the region for starting a business, but almost as many of them affirm that a big constrain in starting a business would be their fear of failure. Overall, the results of our research allow identifying the measures that would be required to be taken by policy makers to stimulate entrepreneurship in European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For ensuring a healthy, solid and stable banking sector, the evaluation and analysis of bank profitability is crucial so that possible weak points and vulnerabilities can be corrected and disposed. The aim of our research is to empirically evaluate the impact of specific internal and external factors on bank profitability, for a sample of 86 commercial banks in the new EU member states, for the period 2003-2011. The results of our research show that bank profitability of most countries in the sample (expressed by ROAE) is significantly influenced by the four bank-specific factors, namely capital adequacy, the ratio of non-performing loans, cost-to-income ratio and bank size, but also by external factors, like banking concentration, annual GDP growth rate and inflation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]