Making Cross-Border E-Commerce Work for SMEs: The 28th Regime and the Future of SME Growth in Europe

Small and medium-sized enterprises remain central to Europe's economic fabric, yet too few manage to translate resilience into cross-border growth. While e-commerce and digital marketplaces can help smaller businesses reach customers beyond their local markets, too many SMEs still face regulatory fragmentation, divergent national requirements and cumulative compliance obligations when selling across borders.

This working lunch will explore how Europe can make cross-border trade simpler, more accessible and more scalable for SMEs. The discussion will examine how current and forthcoming EU initiatives, including the 28th Regime and the broader SME competitiveness and simplification agenda, can support more workable and proportionate frameworks for businesses on the ground.

The session will focus on three key questions:

• • how to reduce regulatory fragmentation and fixed compliance costs for cross-border operations;
• • how to enable digital tools and e-commerce as drivers of SME growth, export and inclusion;
• • how to design ambitious but workable frameworks under the 28th Regime and SME-related initiatives.

A central element of the session is the Practice Lab Exchange, designed to ensure that policy discussion is grounded in real business experience. SME owners and practitioners will share concrete operational challenges linked to cross-border e-commerce, compliance, logistics, platform use and market access.

The practical insights gathered through this exchange will feed into the legislative and policy debate, helping to identify simplification measures and policy solutions that are ambitious, proportionate and implementable for SMEs across Europe.