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500 people is a small business? Wow, definitely this definition is not used in Europe.

Mmm it’s not that far in France a TPE is below 10, a PME between 10 and 250, ETI between 250 and 5000 and a GE above 5000.

500 is almost PME which stands for Petites et Moyennes Entreprises, literally small and medium sized business.

the EU guidelines says <= 250 employees, Germany's KMU is defined as <= 500 employees

Why the negative points?

Exactly in both definitions, the French and the German, the M means MEDIUM. 500 is NOT a SMALL business. It's at least a medium one.

The generic term in industry is SME, ie Small to Medium Enterprise. Mom and Pop stores often don't even qualify as "Small".