Business support in the Europen union and the Czech republic

This bachelor thesis deals with the question of business support in the Czech Republic since it joined the European Union in 2004. The main goal is to describe -- using an analysis of the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises as a basis - the existing sources and possibilities for support for these types of enterprises using European funds within the implementation of the EU cohesion policy. Special attention has been paid to the EU rules for the provision of state aid. In the first and second chapter, there is general description of the business support system in the Czech Republic, followed by a description and comparison of individual policies for the support of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Czech Republic from 2004 to 2013, including the proposal of the new SMEs support policy that has been elaborated for the period 2014 -- 2020. The subject of the third chapter is the analysis of the provision of state aid within the EU cohesion policy and drawing the financial support from EU structural funds. The last chapter focuses on a comparison of the state aid provided in the European Union and Czech Republic, using the statistical data published by the European Commission, the EU Statistical Office and the Office for the Protection of Competition in the Czech Republic.