Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) play a decisive role in the competitiveness of the European economy. To contribute to its consolidation throughout their life cycle, has become a priority at European Level. To this respect, the first five years in an enterprises life are the most difficult, in the sense that survival one year does not seem to improve markedly its prospects of surviving one more year. Current support services are focused on enterprises in the start-up and early phase of development (up to 3 years). They are quite structured and successful, as shown survival rates in this period (1st year: up to 90% & 2nd one: up to 80%). However, 'five-year survival rate' drastically decreases till about 49%. The Project Partners, we strongly believe that articulating a kind of "Spin-off of the start-ups' services", as a gateway to help enterprises to pass from a protective environment to a competitive one, will contribute to increase the survival rate of these enterprises.Therefore, the partnerships overall objective is to jointly define an INTEGRATED SUPPORT PROGRAMME FOR Young SMEs (term internally used to refer to SMEs between its 3rd and 5th years of operations) to contribute to the business consolidation and therefore to improve the efficiency of the SMEs Policies at European level The PARTNERSHIP relies on 12 partners from 10 countries (Spain, Malta, Greece, Ireland, United Kingdom, Germany, Lithonia, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia). 9 of the Partners have a broad experience on SME support and 3 of them are learners. Moreover 6 of Experienced Partners have good practices recognized at Regional or European Level.During the preparatory phase the partners identified the most important factors which contribute to Young SMEs failure. Five were chosen as core services (Management skills, New Markets, New technologies, Cooperation among SMEs and Funding). Three more were selected as innovative services which could help (Business with Public Sector,Local Networking and Business linkages with Academic Sector). As result, 8 Working Groups have been created to work deeply in those topics. Each Working Group will identify, analyze and document the good practices and will organize an Interregional Seminars. The Seminars will be an important tool for the exchange of experiences because they will help partners to know better what the others do. All this info will be integrated in a Young SMEs-Best-practices-report. Then a creative Workshop will be organized where all partners' knowledge will be put together to develop the "YoungSMEs – Integrated Support Programme " and will be shared with regional stakeholders by means of Regional Events. Based on the programme recommendations, partners will define and engage in experience transfers between Experienced partners' and Learner ones'Each partner will develop an Implementation Plan indicating the next actions to implement the project results in their Local or Regional Policies Achievements: Small and medium sized enterprises(SMEs) play a decisive role in the competitiveness of the European economy, and contribute to its consolidation throughout their life cycle has become a priority at European Level. Therefore, the YOUNG SMEs partnership overall objective is to define an INTEGRATED SUPPORT PROGRAMME FOR Young SMEs (term internally used to refer to SMEs between its 3rd and 5th year of operations) to contribute to the business consolidation and therefore to improve the efficiency of the SMEs Policies at European level.This PARTNERSHIP relies on 12 partners from 10 countries (Spain, Malta, Greece, Ireland, United Kingdom, Germany, Lithonia, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia). 9 of the Partners have broad experience on SME support and 3 of them are learners. Moreover 6 of the Experienced Partners have good practices recognized at Regional or European Level.Up to this moment all the above mentioned partners have been heavily involved in the project activities development and the majority of the foreseen tasks have been developed as planned. Also, Communication and Dissemination activities have begun, in order to spread the shared experiences within the project. In this context, the project brand has been designed (logo, poster, initial brochure and online presentation video), the website developed and the launch event organized. All Partners have contributed to the dissemination of the project and its activities on their websites and in the regional and local newspapers and publications. Some of them have also published several articles in specialized press and have disseminated the project events that were held in the current period. One of the objectives of the project is to SHARE KNOWLEDGE AND EXCHANGE EXPERIENCES among the experienced local and regional partners to jointly develop innovative tools and approaches that successfully lead to improve the Young SMEs management capacities, their business development, the application of new technologies or the cooperation among them, and with other local and regional actors, to create synergies and increase their businesses. Regarding this Knowledge sharing and Exchange of experiences, the majority of the tasks were developed as planned for the first Semester of 2012.In this context, foreseen methodology and templates for the compilation of the Good Practices identified by the experienced Partners have been designed. In addition, the Good Practices mapping was launched and over the 80% of this Good Practices were submitted; the actual mapping by location, theme and Partner is being collated. Also, the first Thematic Seminar and the first Study Visit took place in June 2012 in Waterford (Ireland).