On January 28, Giovanni Zazzerini, Secretary General of INSME, participated in the Mastercard Strive EU Small Business Summit held in Brussels, an event dedicated to strengthening the resilience of Europe’s micro and small businesses through digital innovation.
The Summit was preceded by the Mastercard Strive EU Workshop “The Digital Transformation of European Micro-Businesses”, which brought together institutional representatives, private-sector stakeholders, and SME support organizations to discuss the preliminary findings of the Snapshot Study and to identify actionable recommendations to inform future EU and private-sector initiatives. The Snapshot Study captures the current state of digital and sustainability transitions among more than 1,330 micro-businesses across 23 EU countries investigating the level of progress in digital and sustainability journeys. During the workshop, Giovanni Zazzerini took part in a fireside chat with Andrea Halmos (DG Environment), focusing on the gaps identified in the Snapshot Study and sharing best practices from INSME’s network.
The workshop was followed by the Evening Reception at the European Parliament, held under the theme “Resilient EU: Empowering Europe’s Small Businesses through Digital Innovation,” hosted by and with the participation of Victor Negrescu, Vice-President of the European Parliament. In this context, Zazzerini joined the panel “Policy vs Practice – The SME Challenge,” where he emphasized that Europe’s small business landscape remains highly fragmented, and that this fragmentation represents one of the EU’s key structural vulnerabilities. He further underlined that without political sovereignty, the European Union cannot achieve the economic sovereignty needed to ensure competitiveness, growth, and long-term resilience.
INSME’s participation in the Summit reaffirmed the importance of a coordinated and pragmatic approach, one capable of translating European policies into concrete, accessible tools for micro and small businesses, the true backbone of the European economy.
Source: INSME, Mastercard
