Access to Finance of SMEs in CEE Countries and Supportive Measures

The access to finance is very important for the proper functioning and development of the enterprises. But, unfortunately, the access to finance is one of the major problems faced by the SMEs from all the European Union countries. Moreover, the recent financial crisis has brought even more challenges for these enterprises, because thedeterioratingmacroeconomic environmentand the uncertaintyabout themacroeconomicoutlookcaused creditors toshow agreaterreluctancein lending tothese enterprises.Thus, the objective of our paper is toanalyze the problems faced by the SMEs from ten Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries when trying to obtain the financial resources they need in current times, after the recent financial crisis. Another objective is to highlight the reforms adopted by these countries to sustain SMEs financing.The main findings of our paper are the fact that the current financial crisis had major negative implications onSMEs' accesstofinance andthe measures taken bythe decision makers to supportlendingofthese enterprises are not enough, they must extend, in order to achieve a level of the access to finance of SMEs similar to the one in the developed European countries.