The report is the result of a “Best Procedure” (i.e. benchmarking) project carried out by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Enterprise Policy in close co-operation with an Expert Group made up of governmental representatives together with a representative from the European Association of Craft, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (UEAPME). A research project carried out by Scott Wilson consulting an several European experts contributed case studies and an in depth analysis to the report.The report describes and analyses different good practice examples of public policies, programmes and initiatives (“framework conditions”) to encourage the (voluntary) uptake of environmental management systems (EMSs) in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). At present, the uptake of both formal and less formal EMSs by SMEs across Europe is low, largely on account of a number of barriers SMEs face in this respect (see chapters 1 and 2 of this report). Nonetheless, some countries and regions clearly perform better than others. This raises two questions: i) what are the policy options available to public authorities to significantly increase the uptake of EMSs by SMEs?; and ii) what can they learn from successful public policy approaches in other countries and regions? To answer these questions, chapter 3 of this report describes and comments on 24 good practice case studies in 13 different European countries, both at national, regional and local level. The selected good practice examples form the basis for a series of recommendations for the design of relevant policies and programmes, both at national, regional, local and European level (chapter 0). Obviously, these recommendations should not be pursued in isolation, but as part of a well-designed and coherent package of measures.