Most funding programmes ask you to build something new. The SME Packages ask something easier: is there an expert project that would visibly improve your business? If yes, Luxembourg reimburses 70% of it, on projects between €3,000 and €25,000, across five themes: digital, AI, cybersecurity, sustainability and service.
For a small company, this is the most accessible aid on the map, and the most underused relative to its accessibility.
How the aid is built
The mechanics are refreshingly concrete. You define a consulting project with an approved expert, on one of the five themes. The project has a scope, a duration and a price. The aid covers 70% of the cost within the band, meaning a €10,000 expert engagement costs your company €3,000.
The themes are broad in practice:
- Digital: process digitalisation, e-commerce build-outs, software selection and implementation planning.
- AI: use-case analysis, feasibility, first implementations of applied AI in operations.
- Cybersecurity: audits, hardening plans, incident preparedness for companies that have never had a security review.
- Sustainability: energy and resource diagnostics, decarbonisation planning, compliance with arriving reporting expectations.
- Service: service design and customer-experience improvement projects.
There is also a well-known entry point at the smaller end: the digital-maturity assessment (Fit 4 Digital), a structured diagnosis with a costed action plan, covered in full. Implementing the resulting plan is optional, and can itself qualify for further aid; the assessment is where many companies discover what to ask for next.
Who it fits
The design target is the established SME rather than the day-one startup: a company with real operations, where an expert intervention has something to improve. Craft businesses digitising quotes and scheduling, retailers building e-commerce, service firms getting their first serious security audit, small manufacturers doing an energy diagnostic: this is the natural constituency.
If you are pre-revenue and product-focused, the startup instruments (Fit 4 Start, Young Innovative Enterprise) fit better; the SME Packages reward operating businesses.
The rule that eats applications
One rule dominates everything else, and it is the same one across Luxembourg aid: apply before you start. The engagement letter signed last week, the consultant already onboarded, the project already half-delivered: costs incurred before approval usually disqualify themselves. The application belongs between "we know what we want" and "we have committed to it".
Practical sequencing: define the project, get the expert's offer, submit, then start on approval. The waiting period is planning time, not lost time.
Making the 70% worth it
The subsidy makes consulting cheap; it does not make bad consulting good. Three habits keep the value real:
- Write the outcome first. "After this project we can X" beats a theme label.
- Choose the expert for the problem, not for familiarity with the paperwork alone.
- Budget the implementation. A funded plan that no one executes is a well-subsidised PDF.
We help companies scope the project, structure the application and sequence it correctly with any other aid in play. Check your options in a free call; for many SMEs this programme is the fastest yes on the whole funding map.