Documento #id 77954

Dear Mr X, 

In January 2026, you submitted a complaint to the European Ombudsman about how the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) decided to impose an administrative charge on your company for an incorrect SME size declaration.

In 2017, you made an SME size declaration in the context of your application for SME reduction fees. You indicated that your company should be considered a ‘small’ SME. You claimed that you proactively corrected the size from small to medium a year later[1].

ECHA initiated the SME verification process and concluded that your company should have been considered ‘medium’, and thus not ‘small’, at the time of your application in 2017. ECHA also found that you had not followed the relevant instructions for correcting the SME size category[2]. In fact, instead of following steps 1 and 2 explicitly foreseen in the applicable rules for correcting the SME size catego