On European level yearly thousands of healthy businesses and with it hundred thousand jobs disappear from the market since the business succession is not regulated. Statistically approximately 610,000 small- and medium sized businesses with approximately 2.4 million employees will be affected by it within the next 10 years. From the business- and economic sight many of these businesses are indeed worth being maintained. Especially jobs for often older employees would persist and still extant company structures could be usefully used in future. Additionally, often badly hedged transferring businessmen could be financially assured by an ordered taking-over (“businessman-pension”).The handing over or take-over of an enterprise requires a variety of planning and arrangements which must be made early to guarantee a successful handing over or take-over. Very often there are even specific recapitalization measures which have to be rapidly realized within such handing over businesses. Due to enquiries in the context of the project application, the awareness for the necessity of a long-term and strategic planning of the business succession as well as measures for security and relief of the business succession is still missing at the European level. Furthermore the experience of the project applicant and the project partners show gaps in education- and consultation-offers for the business succession process.This is the background for the suggested project “Business Transfer Programme” (BTP) of the project consortium. Within the scope of the project a graduated training for business succession which is standardized at European level will be developed and implemented. The planned training is an innovation on the European education-market because comparable trainings aren’t yet available in the partner countries of the project consortium.The development of the curriculum for the “Business Transfer Programme“ will be designed for the requirements and demands of business successors (e.g.: recapitalization measures), will be built on modules and will connect the latest teaching- and studying-methods (face to face, e-learning, peer group learning,…). An important part will be the handling with and the enrolment for a specially designed “screening tool” which will help to test the successor business and which will enable a first business-takeover–check. With this tool it should become much easier for business successors to identify the right businesses and to collect important entrepreneurial start-information. The suggested project will make an essential contribution to cope with the alteration of generations in Europe because already existing businesses will be continued and thereby jobs will be maintained respectively saved and consequently the economy in Europe will be strengthened.The project consortium divides the target group “business successors” into the following three groups:• Family members and because demonstrably more and more businesses are been transfered to foreign people• Employees of the business which should be taken-over and• Externals, who want to take-over an existing business (this could be unemployed people too)