SME's and VSE's: main features and definition parameters 

Definition :

There are a multitude of definitions of SME's, the meaning of which can vary from one environment to the other.

It is the definition of the European Union that will be retained as reference definition insofar as it corresponds to the standards taken into account by the DFi's that will be dealt with in this guidebook.

The European Union considers officially as SME's the companies with less than 250 workers and that are independent from enterprises with a bigger size.
Furthermore their annual turnover or their total balance sheet may not exceed 43 and 50 millions euros respectively.

According to these standards, there are three categories of SME's:

• The Very Small Enterprise (or micro-enterprise - VSE): 1 to 9 employees;
• The Small Enterprise: 10 to 49 employees;
• The Medium Enterprise: 50 to 249 employees.