When it submits its first declaration of the start-up of a non-salaried activity, the enterprise or corporate body is registered in the directory and receives a unique identification number: the SIREN.

The appearance of a market productive legal operating unit with no predecessor (except for agriculture, which is not considered in the calculation) is considered to be a newly created enterprise.

Since 1st January 2007, the concept of creation adopted by INSEE is based on the implementation of new means of production. It corresponds to the concept defined by EUROSTAT.

The business start-up series according to this new concept is recalculated into the "NA" aggregated classification since the year 2000, which serves for the analysis of data over a long period.

The business start-up statistics include applications for start-ups as "auto-entrepreneurs" (new, simplified self-employment status), starting from the data relating to January 2009.