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Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)

What is an SME?

"SME" stands for small and medium-sized enterprises – as defined in EU law: EU recommendation 2003/361 .

The main factors determining whether a company is an SME are:

  1. number of employees and
  2. either turnover or balance sheet total.

Company category

Employees

Turnover

or

Balance sheet total

Medium-sized

< 250

≤ € 50 m

≤ € 43 m

Small

< 50

≤ € 10 m

≤ € 10 m

Micro

< 10

≤ € 2 m

≤ € 2 m

These ceilings apply to the figures for individual firms only. A firm which is part of larger grouping may need to include employee/turnover/balance sheet data from that grouping too.

For the details of how this works, see:

What help can SMEs get?

There are 2 broad types of potential benefit for a company if it meets the criteria:

  • eligibility for support under many EU business-support programmes targeted specifically at companies of this size: E.g. research funding, competitiveness and innovation funding and similar national support programmes that could otherwise be banned as unfair government support ("state aid" – see block exemption regulation).
  • fewer requirements or reduced fees for EU administrative compliance.

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