Anyone who runs a small business appreciates the value of time. There is always too much to do and too little time to do it in. They might not complain about it, but many governments face the same challenge.

In January, Slovenia took over the EU's rotating presidency. For the next six months a country of two million people will guide the fortunes of the EU, which represents a population of nearly half a billion.

If that's not daunting enough, Slovenia's to-do list includes steering ratification of the EU's new Reform Treaty, pushing ahead with ambitious energy and climate goals, stabilising the Western Balkan region and pursuing the Lisbon Agenda.

It will do very well to achieve any out of the four, but on this last point at least, Slovenia has its heart in the right place. As the Slovenian growth minister Ziga Turk puts it: "Finance is not the biggest problem in Europe. It's the lack of risk-taking that is the main problem."

There is no suggestion that we should expect a new initiative to make Europe more enterprise-friendly, but the Slovenians have promised to increase support for research and development (R&D) and for small firms. Is this enough?

Business groups think not. They want the Slovenian presidency to push for agreement on a European patent. Patents provide the means for knowledge transfer. The Americans are good at it, the Europeans are not. This is largely due to the inability of European countries to simplify the means of knowledge transfer. Currently, intellectual property rights have to be registered, and defended, in each member state.

This might sound a bit abstract for small business, but in the UK over 60 per cent of patents are registered by small firms. At the moment, the lack of a community patent leaves European busines without an essential instrument to innovation.

Slovenia has a lot to do in a short period of time; sadly it seems unlikely that it will take on the one issue that could spark real innovation among small firms.