Abstract:

Governments of all countries try to create an economic environment appropriate to technologically intensive economic activities.  Small and medium-sized enterprises are fundamental generators of jobs, creative entrepreneurship and innovation not only in developed countries. Those are essential factors for the development of competitiveness and employment in the EU too. The cooperation among states was important for their transition from totalitarian regime toward free, pluralistic and democratic society. Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland entered together into European Union in May 2004. Aim of European Union, formulated in strategy Europe 2020, is a greatly emphasized competitiveness increase by innovations, by implementation of modern technologies and especially by investments to R&D.  In contributions were analysed the current situation of SMEs in the Visegrad countries. The figures were compared using populations as the parameter. The data sets used in the research come from the secondary data collections. The objective of this paper is a comparison governmental program to support the R & D for the small and medium-sized enterprises within the countries of V4. A broad spectrum of tax R&D supports in different V4 countries significantly decreases competitiveness of this grouping. Some countries offer the tax support automatically, others states require positive results of special administrative procedures. The main consequence is that the tax support plays just rather limited role if it is incorporated into strategic planning of SMEs. Motivations of the tax R&D support are low if not negligible. The support of R&D within R&D tax incentives’ is young in V4 countries. In the Czech Republic, R&D tax incentives were introduced in 2005. Presented results of each economy show that due to the methodology applied are standard R & D support greatly overrated. Number of SMEs in countries of V4 doesn’t differ significantly from the developed countries of EU, performance and value added per employee has a growing trend. It is an obvious fact that SMEs performances are improving during the last several years. It must be emphasized that the growth of competitiveness of SMEs means investments in R & D. However, countries of V4 are still on approximately half the level of R & D expenditure achieved of economic leaders of the EU.