THE ANALYSIS OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP SUPPORT SYSTEM ON EUROPEAN, CROATIAN AND LOCAL LEVEL

Small and medium entrepreneurship development is one of the most important commitments of the European Union, already transposed into clear targets embedded in strategic and operational planning documents. The structure of small and medium enterprises in Croatia, the newest member of the European Union, mostly follows the average structures of the other 27 members, which means that the adoption of the European entrepreneurship support system is becoming an imperative for Croatia. Therefore, the objective of this research is to determine the actual status of the Croatian entrepreneurship support system, in comparison with other member states of the European Union. The results of the research suggest that Croatia has implemented the majority of priorities and targets defined in strategic European documents on the national level, but considerably less on the local one (the City of Rijeka). The analysis of operational targets shows that Croatia has adopted one-third of the EU recommendations. In the field of monitoring the efficiency of entrepreneurship support measures, the system of European indicators has recently been implemented on the national level, but not on the local one where there are still no preconditions for establishing local databases which would ensure control over public spending of cities and municipalities on entrepreneurship support, as well as control over spending of national funds distributed to entrepreneurs locally.