In fact, in addition to SMEs in Greece, Ireland and Spain, a large number of SMEs operating in The Netherlands are encountering significant obstacles (around 45% of the firms surveyed). These figures reflect the considerable heterogeneity in borrowing conditions, as also shown by the most recent bank lending survey.
This fragmentation is all the more troublesome in an economy such as that of the euro area, in which financial intermediation is bank-based for at least three-quarters of firms’ financing. And it penalises all the more those enterprises, often of a small or medium size, which depend more heavily on the banking system.