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In 2019, Europe’s 25 million SMEs represent 99% of European businesses and are the backbone of the EU economy. They employ around 100 million people, account for more than half of Europe’s Gross domestic product and provide two out of three jobs. Almost a quarter of SMEs in Europe already enable the energy transition by offering green products or services. Around 65% of employees in Europe are working in SMEs, with some considerable national differences. In Italy SMEs generate around 70% of value added in ‘non-financial business economy’, above the European Union average of 56.4%.<br> Despite the significant magnitude of the potential for increasing energy efficiency in SMEs, its full implementation is still held back by numerous technical and economic barriers. The same barriers also often prevent SMEs from easy access to the energy services market.<br> This paper, developed in the framework of the LEAP4SME EU funded project, aims at understanding the existing SMEs-targeted energy efficiency measures in Italy. Given the lack of up-to-date literature studies and comprehensive policies evaluation reports, a more specific disaggregation of the main policy results in terms of firm size is proposed.<br> Energy efficiency support to SMEs in Italy usually falls under a variety of policies and regulations targeted to all size enterprises or even wider targets. The most important Energy efficiency schemes in Italy – White certificates, Renewable energy for heating and cooling support scheme, National Energy Efficiency Fund, Energy Intensive Industry programme – cover both SMEs and large companies. Most of the national energy efficiency measures specifically targeted to SMEs fall under Article 8 of the Energy Efficiency Directive. Moreover, specific programmes for encouraging SMEs to undergo energy audits have been promoted by voluntary regional calls through the co-financing of national funds (Ministry of Economic Development) or using European funds.<br> Learnings and findings from this work are used to provide recommendations for policy makers and implementers relative to the above programmes for SMEs.