About us
99.9% of French businesses are micro, small or medium-sized companies. Their success is the key to the country’s growth. CPME (Confederation of small and medium-sized enterprises) promotes and defends their interests.
It is chaired by an entrepreneur, François Asselin. CPME is the employers’ organisation for small and medium-sized companies in all sectors: industry, service, trade, craft and liberal professions.
As a social partner, the Confederation defends these employers in joint negotiations and with public administrations, in France and around the world.
With a network of 200 professional federations and unions and 117 territorial unions, the Confederation of SMEs is established in every French departments and regions, including the overseas territories.
With an office in Brussels, CPME acts on behalf of SMEs in discussions with the European Union. Internationally, it coordinates collective actions to help SMEs go international.
An SME is not just a small version of a big company. That is why CPME conveys loud and clear the values and specificities of these human-sized businesses:
- Commitment of the manager who takes considerable risks by investing his own assets,
- Solidarity of businesses in which directors and employees work together,
- Dynamism of responsive field businesses focused on innovation,
- Proximity of SMEs that are deeply rooted in their area.
* Source INSEE, 2016
CPME in figures
- 150,000 companies with 3 million people employed
- 20,000 CPME representatives for 400 mandates (URSSAF, Pôle Emploi, France Compétences, commercial courts, etc.).
