Businesses in Europe 2024

In 2024, the European Union was estimated to have approximately 26.06 million enterprises operating in the non-financial business economy, compared with 25.80 million in 2023. Since 2008, there is estimated to have been a net increase of around 5.9 million business enterprises during this period.

Number of enterprises in the non-financial business economy of the European Union (EU27) from 2008 to 2024

Characteristic	Number of enterprises
2008	19,814,874
2009	19,671,823
2010	20,170,017
2011	20,236,478
2012	20,515,507
2013	20,662,299
2014	21,467,982
2015	21,332,763
2016	22,074,344
2017	22,001,092
2018	22,478,696
2019	22,939,698
2020	23,153,400
2021	24,493,602
2022	25,248,632
2023	25,807,736
2024	26,064,085

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Release date

July 2024

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Region

Europe, EU

Survey time period

2008 to 2024

Supplementary notes

*Forecast data

The source adds the following information:
The data cover the 'non-financial business economy', which includes industry, construction, trade, and services (NACE Rev. 2 sections B to J, L, M and N), but not enterprises in agriculture, forestry and fisheries and the largely non-market service sectors such as education and health. The following size-class definitions are applied: micro firms (0-9 persons employed), small firms (10-49 persons employed), medium-sized firms (50-249 persons employed), and large firms (250+ persons employed). The advantage of using Eurostat data is that the statistics are harmonised and comparable across countries. The disadvantage is that for some countries the data may be different from those published by national authorities.

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