A company is independent if all of the following conditions are met: 

• The company does not own 25% or more of the capital or voting rights of any other company.
• 25% or more of the enterprise is not directly or indirectly controlled by one or more other enterprises or public entities.  
• An enterprise is not under the same control as other units engaged in economic activity, so that they should be considered as a single enterprise. Control may be based on ownership or voting rights, contracts, personal ownership or other arrangements.

Exception for owners (25% or more):  
However, a company can still be considered independent if the entities owning 25% or more are not linked to the company and the owners fall into one of the following categories: 

• public investment companies 
• Venture capital firms
• institutional investors (including regional development funds)
• Higher education institutions or non-profit research centres
• small municipalities with an annual budget of less than €10 million and fewer than 5,000 inhabitants
• Risk capital investments are regularly made by natural persons or groups of natural persons ("business angels") who invest their own funds in non-listed companies (the total amount of investments in the same company may not exceed EUR 1,250,000).  
   

A company is NOT independent if it has: 

Ownership: The ownership or voting rights of the company in relation to the other company are at least 25% and not more than 50% (the company owns one or the other owns the other), and neither of them exercises control over the other. 

Affiliation: An enterprise has control over another enterprise or another enterprise has control over it. Control arises, for example, when: 

• ownership or voting rights exceed 50% 
• has the right to appoint or dismiss a majority  of the members of the administrative, management or supervisory board;
• has the right to exercise control by virtue of a contract, articles of association, articles of association, or bylaws;
• the majority of the votes are controlled by agreement with the other shareholders

A linked relationship can also be created through personal ownership or other arrangements. 
 
The dependency relationship affects the determination of the size of the enterprise as follows: 

Interconnectedness: The size category is determined at the level of the whole "one enterprise", i.e. by combining the number of employees, turnover and balance sheet total of units under the same control in full.

Ownership (25–50%): When determining the size category, the figures of the partner companies in relation to their capital or voting rights are added to the enterprise's own figures. 
 
Please note that Business Finland interprets a company as a large company by default, unless it can prove that it is in a different size category. 

Further information: 

SME Definition Guide

Commission Recommendation on the definition of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises applied by Business Finland