This is also true in Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States and many other countries, of course, but it is not now true in much of Europe (where the European Central Bank is a creature of the Maastricht Treaty) or in those countries where the central bank has been given essentially unlimited independence under the constitution.
The fortunes of the euro area economy are intertwined with the financial health of SMEs. One solution to this problem could be for firms to bypass the bank lending channel and replace bank finance with capital market finance. This trend has already been observed for larger corporates, with European corporate bond issuance expanding rapidly in the last few years.