The Chamber of Crafts Potsdam as promoter is planning a pool project "Internship in Europe - a key to success" in the program Erasmus+ in cooperation with the Italian partners Eurocultura in Vicenza, the Istituti Santa Paola in Mantova and the Spanish partner EURO21 in Málaga. As part of Europeanization of the market business companies have a growing demand for qualified professionals who have linguistic and intercultural skills. Professional internships allow apprentices the acquisition of these skills already in the vocational education and training. They get the opportunity to acquaint oneself with the working and living environment from within of another EU country. Objectives of the project are: • Placement of professional internships in the vocational education and training to strengthening the European area of education, • Acquisition of technical, language and intercultural skills among apprentices, • Contribution to the development and safeguarding of professionals (principle: Lifelong Learning) especially for small and medium- sized enterprises (SMEs). The Chamber of Crafts Potsdam takes over the coordination of the project with the tasks of public relations and networking, financial management and reporting, communication, agreement and evaluation with involved actors. As part of the project a total of 24 trainees (nationwide) mainly from the technically sector with the successful completion of intermediate examination can be apply for an internship of at least 21 days from June 2015 till May 2017 at the Chamber of Crafts Potsdam. The planning of an individual internship follows temporal and task-specific criteria and will be organized jointly with partners in Italy or in Spain, and in consultation with the apprentice, the company and the vocational education school as need-based as possible. In counselling interviews the participants and the associated company will get all needed information to prepare the internship. A foreign language acquisition of the host country is planned in advance. The respective partner organization is responsible for the locally stay and will provide the accommodation and an internship in a guest company. A contact person will be available for the apprentices over the time. She/he takes care for the participants during the internship, provides a cultural program and evaluates the whole implementation process. The experiences and acquired skills will be conclusively evaluated jointly with all involved actors. Each apprentice receives a certificate of the partner organization, the confirmation of the stay and the Europass-Mobility, which certified the acquired technical, social and cultural skills for the successful completion of internship. During the long-term of the project work of the Chamber of Crafts Potsdam with transnational programs clearly shows that the involvement of apprentices and employees with international experiences in SMEs can support the introduction of innovative processes, products and services on the labor market. Qualified staffs with European work experience denote an important component for entrepreneurial activity during times of skilled worker shortage. Apprentices with international experience return to their companies with a high motivation and a learning receptivity because as a consequence they are sustainably strengthened in their person. Getting to know of new products and methods of preparation, other operations and service offerings, the acquisition of new technologies, foreign language skills and the insight into neighboring cultures are important for this development process. This qualification will be subsequently used for the range of services in the company here. It is a very important competence to acquire the ability to integrate itself in new and foreign work processes for a specific time during the vocational education and training and to provide the willingness to take on new and different technological standards. That will be considered and supported by the European and national approach from Lifelong Learning.