Crisis costs for European SMEs: How COVID-19 changed the playing field for European SMEs

1 "Crisis costs for European SMEs – How COVID-19 changed the playing field for European SMEs" Executive Summary The goal of the present study is to identify and analyse the diverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on European SMEs and point out the “winning” or “losing” conditions that have shaped the variety of experiences and reactions of SMEs during crisis management and recovery. [...] This is accompanied by a narrative of the main drivers and obstacles of SME performance encountered by the six industries subject of the study, and it is coupled to a selection of the main winning and losing factors experienced at sectoral level by the companies. [...] In order to develop a comprehensive, yet accurate review of the impressive abundance of literature dealing with the impacts of the crisis on SMEs, the researchers first proceeded to the execution of an adapted Systematic Literature Review (SLR) concerning the 6 pandemic challenge areas in our classification applied to the 6 sectors and the EU- 12 country sample requested by the analysis. [...] These last ones are introduced in the format of info-boxes in the study, as they represented a chance to enquire into the adaptation capacity and the real-life obstacles of the companies while enduring the persisting crisis. [...] In IT – another of the countries with the highest concentration of containment measures (see also 2.4.6) – the understanding of what initially constituted an “essential sector” was the subject of strong debates on the onset of the pandemic and led to many revisions of government decrees.