Définition
An enterprise is the smallest combination of legal units that is an organisational unit producing goods and services, enjoying a certain decision-making autonomy, especially for the allocation of its current resources.
The enterprise defined here is a statistical unit that has no legal existence. This concept is often more relevant than the legal unit for economic analysis and is used, for example, to determine the category of enterprise (SME, intermediate-sized or large enterprise).
Remarque
This is a European definition, incorporated in the implementation decree (No. 2008-1354) relating to Article 51 of the law on the modernisation of the economy, “concerning the criteria allowing companies to be adjudged to belong to a certain category for the purposes of statistical and economic analysis”.