Some 10 years ago the concept of Life Long Learning was introduced in Europe for the educational world as well as for the business world. Today the concept is well known in large companies, and more and more strategic competence development programmes are set up in the companies including professional education and continuous training. Many large companies are close to an implementation of competence management.Unfortunately, this has not happened in the world of SMEs (Small and Medium sized Enterprises). Due to lack of focus, time, resources etc. more and more employees in this sector lack the necessary education and continu-ous training. Moreover, the SMEs do not have a general overview of their competences and therefore they are not able to set up appropriate education and training programmes which can cause lack of vital competitiveness. Finally, this problem is mainly related to the employees with a short formal education (the early school leavers).This COMAVET-project (Competence Management in the European VET-sector) tackles these problems taking advantage of experiences achieved through previous projects in this field, mainly financed by EU funds. The main aims and objectives of the project are:• To analyze and lay down the specific needs for managing competences in the European SMEs • To transfer and adapt products, materials and results from previous projects in order to meet the needs from beneficiaries and end users (managers and employees in the European SMEs)• To establish a system for an intangible monetary standard• To analyze, coordinate and establish a competence management system including competence budget-ing, assessment and accounting. An e-learning programme will be integrated in the system to facilitate the use of the system• To implement and test the adapted system for primary and secondary target groupsThe partnership is composed of a mixture of major European business and technical colleges, a university and private companies. The partnership holds a unique knowledge of European educational systems and has gained a tremendous knowledge of handling international projects. Moreover, one of the partners have been awarded “The world’s best e-learning developer”The tangible outcomes from this project will be:• A system for managing competences including competence budgeting, assessment and accounting• A new set of tools for the European VET-systemThe intangible outcomes from this project will be:• Improvement of quality in the VET-system• Increased interest for competence management in the SMEs• Increased cooperation between the educational world and the SMEsThe impact of this project is a visible improvement of the competences and competitiveness of European SMEs