Many Member States of the European Union have come up with programmes to foster Small and Medium Enterprises' (SME) compliance with environmental law or to help SME better their environmental performance. This is because SME playing a pre-eminent role in the economic structure of the European Union are a source of considerable impacts on the environment. This objective of this project is to gain an overview of those programmes in the Member States and to pick best practice cases.

The programmes can be divided into two categories:

• helping SME comply with environmental law (by information campaigns, legal helplines, financial promotion of systems documenting compliance in the companies) and
• helping SME improve their environmental performance. (subsidies for investments in innovative technology, introduction of environmental management systems).

The description of the programmes will be part of the project report.

The objective of the project is to inform the European Commission about interesting national programmes and to elaborate i.a. on the following points:

• experiences with the initiative,
• factors that have contributed to the success of the initiative,
• possibility to transfer the programme to other countries.

The information contained in the project report might also be used in the development of the EU Compliance Assistance Programme, which is currently being discussed.