It will take a team effort to get there – from health authorities, from fiscal authorities and from all of you here. But I can assure you that the ECB will continue to play its part, as we have done since the first days of the crisis.  2. “An attitude and a conviction”. See Erhard, L. (1956), 1. European Commission (2019),  SME Performance Review. “Mittelstandspolitik”, in Rüstow, A. (ed. ), Der mittelständische Unternehmer in der Sozialen Marktwirtschaft: Wortlaut der Vorträge auf der vierten Arbeitstagung der Aktionsgemeinschaft Soziale Marktwirtschaft e.V am 17. November 1955 in Bad Godesberg, Ludwigsburg, pp. 51-61. 3. Simon, H. (2012), Hidden Champions – Aufbruch nach Globalia: Die Erfolgsstrategien unbekannter Weltmarktführer, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt/New York. 4.   McKinsey (2020), “  How COVID-19 has pushed companies over the  technology tipping point—and transformed business forever”, 5 October. 5.  ”, NBER Working Papers, No 27137, National  Barrero, J.M., Bloom, N. and Davis, S.J. (2020), “  COVID-19 Is Also  a Reallocation Shock  Bureau of Economic Research, May. , 15 July.  7. SME United (2020),  , 30 June. 8. IMF (2021), “ ”, 19 January.  9. 2009-2018 average. This definition of external finance includes bank 6. OECD (2020),  Coronavirus (COVID-19): SME policy responses  The economic impact of COVID-19 on SMEs in  Europe  Germany: 2020 Article IV Staff Report  loans, debt securities, trade credit and other liabilities and excludes intercompany loans and equity. 10. Aggregate figure for all maturities. 6/8  11.
This encourages banks to grant loans to SMEs and refinance them by borrowing from the ECB. In parallel, our supervisory arm ensured that there were no prudential barriers to banks acting quickly, which freed up € billion in bank capital for new lending. And fiscal authorities complemented our efforts, making available wide-ranging loan guarantees and other liquidity support measures – equalling close to 20% of euro area GDP. This was crucial to mitigate the higher credit risk banks face when lending to SMEs during a recession. As a result, from March to May last year, bank lending to euro area firms rose by the largest amount on record. And it was SMEs that benefited the most from both cheap and abundant credit. 4/8  Lending rates on very small loans – which are a proxy for lending to SMEs – declined substantially, with firms able to borrow at the lowest rates ever recorded – below 2%. [10] And, since March, € billion in new small loans have been granted to SMEs in the euro area, including € billion to SMEs in Germany. Our policies were key to achieving that outcome. Banks taking part in our TLTROs saw a considerable increase in their credit growth, with loans rising by over € billion in the year up to September. And this dovetailed with government loan guarantees to funnel credit to SMEs, which received more than 70% of all the guaranteed loans granted.