ABSTRACT

Statistical measures of success for European SMEs correlate best not with wealth measures, but rather with more mundane, structurally fixed, and predictable information such as the size of the country’s GDP and the size of its population. It is not surprising that bigger countries almost always have more SMEs, more SME turnover, and higher SME gross value added than smaller countries. This is demonstrated with statistics on GDP, SME numbers, SME turnover, and SME GVA in 15 EU countries for a sample year, 1995. Still, there are a few facts worth noting.