Primo-création pays €2,000 a month for up to 6 months (€12,000 at the ceiling) to newly created micro-enterprises in the commerce and craft sectors. The amount is the easy part.
Four conditions decide whether you can apply at all: your business permit must be no more than 6 months old, you must not have held an earlier business permit within a 10-year lookback, any stake you hold in another company must be no more than 25%, and the activity has to sit in commerce or craft. The first of those carries a clock, and it starts running without you.
The shape of the money
This is not a lump sum you receive and deploy. Guichet.public.lu puts the instalment at €2,000 a month and the maximum duration at 6 months; the €12,000 figure is that arithmetic carried to full term. The distinction matters for planning. An instalment tracks the founder's monthly burn rather than the project's capital expenditure, so it does nothing for the fit-out invoice that lands before opening day.
It also has an end date built in. 6 months of €2,000 is runway, and runway stops on schedule. A cash plan that treats the instalment as the answer to the first year has moved the problem to the month after the last payment rather than solved it.
The four gates
The eligibility conditions do more filtering than the sector labels suggest, and they are cumulative: clearing three of four is the same result as clearing none. All four sit on the aide à la primo-création page at guichet.public.lu as it stood at its 10 January 2025 update, the sector scope in the summary block and the three conditions under "Conditions préalables".
| Gate | The test | The figure | What it catches |
|---|---|---|---|
| Age of the permit | how old your business permit is | no more than 6 months | founders who trade first and go looking for aid later |
| No earlier permit | whether you held a business permit within the lookback period | 10 years | a permit taken out years ago for a side activity and forgotten |
| Stakes elsewhere | the size of a holding you keep in another company | no more than 25% | a dormant third of a friend's Sàrl, never sold |
| Activity, size and newness | the aid's own scope: newly created micro-enterprises in the commerce and craft sectors | three filters in one phrase | an activity the permit classifies outside commerce or craft |
The last row carries three separate tests: newly created, micro-enterprise, and the two sectors. Only the sector words are obvious. "Micro-enterprise" is a definition with headcount and turnover behind it, so confirm your own figures against the aid page before you build a plan on it.
Two clocks that look alike
The entry gate runs 6 months and the payout period runs 6 months. Same number today, counted from different events. 6 months is how old your permit may be when you come to the aid. 6 months is how long the instalments may run afterwards. Nothing about the second extends the first.
The practical consequence is that the clock you are racing is printed on a document you may not have yet. The permit carries the date — not the incorporation deed, not the lease. And the permit is not instant: guichet gives the ministry 3 months to decide on a business permit application, adding that the absence of a ministerial reply before the end of the 3-month period counts as a tacit authorisation.
So the date you are racing is set by the ministry rather than by you. A founder who plans forwards from an opening date can find that the window opened weeks earlier, on the day the permit was signed.
What actually sinks an application
Four failure modes, in the order they appear in a founder's timeline.
The classification is not yours to assert. Commerce and craft are the target sectors, and the classification that counts is the one attached to your permit, not the one in your business description.
A consultancy that thinks of itself as a trade, or a workshop filed under a service category, discovers the mismatch at the aid stage rather than the permit stage. By then the permit is issued and the 6-month clock is already running. Read the sector wording on the permit application before you sign it.
The forgotten prior permit. A 10-year lookback reaches far enough to catch a permit taken out for a market stall, a short-lived import idea, or a freelance activity that never really started. The permit is on record whether or not you remember it.
A stake you never think about. The 25% cap on holdings in other companies catches people who would describe themselves as first-time founders in every ordinary sense. A share in a sibling's company, taken for family reasons and never touched since, is a live shareholding on paper. The test is the percentage on the register, not how involved you feel.
Sequencing the permit against the company. The files interlock: guichet states that the articles of association must be registered with the Trade and Companies Register before the permit is definitively granted. Incorporation, registration and permit run as one chain, and the aid gate sits at the end of it. Our business permit guide sets out the qualification and integrity conditions that decide how long that chain takes for you.
Common questions
How much is primo-création in total?
€2,000 a month for a maximum of 6 months, which reaches €12,000 at full term. It is paid across the period rather than at the start.
My business permit came through four months ago. Am I too late?
Not on the permit-age gate. The condition is that the permit is no more than 6 months old, so four is inside it. The margin is thinner than it sounds once the file has to be assembled, and the other three gates apply independently of this one.
I have owned a company before. Does that end it?
Not by itself. The condition is written against prior business permits over a 10-year lookback, and separately against holdings above 25% in another company. Those are two different tests. Having owned a company matters only if it left you with a permit inside the lookback, or with a stake above the cap.
Is this the same as Fit 4 Start?
No. The two are aimed at opposite ends of the economy. Primo-création is scoped to newly created micro-enterprises in the commerce and craft sectors. Fit 4 Start is scoped to digital technologies, health or space, or the field specified in the Fit 4 Start call. It also asks for a team of at least 2 and accepts companies up to 5 years old.
The sequence that keeps the window open
- Settle your permit classification before you file for the permit. The sector wording on the permit is what the aid reads later; correcting it afterwards costs weeks of a 6-month window.
- Check your own history against the 10-year lookback. Any earlier business permit, however brief, belongs on the table at the planning stage.
- List every shareholding you hold and its percentage. Anything above 25% in another company is a gate, so resolve or document it before the file goes in.
- Diary the permit date the day it issues. That date, not the incorporation date, starts the 6-month count. Put the aid file on the calendar in the same hour.
- Build the cash plan on 6 instalments, then on the month after the last one. Write down what carries the business once the payments stop.