What is an SME?
What is an SME?
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are defined in the EU recommendation 2003/361.
The main factors determining whether a company is an SME are:
- number of employees and
- 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 that is part of larger group may need to include employee/turnover/balance sheet data from that group too.