In 2010, the legal concept of the criminal liability of legal persons or corporate criminal liability entered into force for the first time in the Spanish legal system, even though its regulation was quite summary.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of Europe's economy. They represent the major of all businesses in the EU, and in the past years, they have considerably increased the percentage of employees in the whole territory.

The possibility of limiting liability by allocating just a part of the estate to a particular business was one of the major successes of the legal development in the tradition of Roman law.