Background The Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) is intended to provide an open, transparent and accountable framework for organisations to demonstrate compliance and improvement with environmental laws and regulations. A key influencing factor in EMAS uptake is the role of State regulators in actively supporting the integration of EMAS. Objective evidence is required before national authorities endorse quality standards and evidence on EMAS was not considered sufficient by UK regulators. A LIFE-Environment project was approved to address this information gap and provide central government with the confirmation that they required to endorse EMAS as a legitimate mechanism for improving an organisation’s environmental performance and legislative compliance. Objectives The beneficiary’s “REMAS” LIFE project was established to produce comparative data on the environmental performance and compliance of organisations that were EMAS registered and those which were not. In this way the objective was to demonstrate the value of the EMAS standard and examine how effective the bottom-up EMAS approach was in helping improve environmental performance, faster or further, than top-down command and control regulations. Conclusions from this work would be used to assess mechanisms for improving EMAS uptake in the UK. Results The project methodology involved surveying over 500 organisations, from a range of sectors across Europe, to assess if they had any form of environmental management system (EMS) in place. A measure of their environmental performance was then taken through a web-based questionnaire, with follow up visits arranged for a selection of sites for quality control. Analysis of the data examined the outcomes from implementing different types of EMS and specifically: the change in behaviour at a site in terms of environmental management activities and improved self knowledge of permit breaches; the impact of behaviour changes on emission levels, (benchmarked against best available techniques); and how the EMS helped organisations comply with legislation. The data generated through the REMAS project confirmed that the adoption of an accredited certified EMS improves site environmental management activities and overall environmental management is better under EMAS than under for example ISO14001. This was attributed to the fact that EMAS is driven by better performance in progress monitoring, documentation control and (self) reporting of environmental achievements. Results from the REMAS project have been widely disseminated and the project website included fact sheets that were available in 11 different EU languages. Overall findings from the LIFE project provide the hard data that will help support the wider implementation of EMAS by giving strength to regulators and national authorities on the importance of such systems. Disclaimer : This « results » section should be considered as a draft until the Commission has completed its evaluation .