"As highlighted by the European Space Policy and in line with the Europe 2020 Flagship Initiative Innovation Union, the development of a European Space Situational Awareness (SSA) capability will protect European space assets providing economic, social and strategic benefits to the EU and its Member States.The European Union Satellite Centre (EUSC), an EU Agency linking space and security with distinctive technical expertise on SSA issues and on the secure handling of civilian and military data, offers a unique environment to discuss the SSA challenging issues covering simultaneously institutional, national, civilian, military and technical SSA actors.The STEP (Support to the developmenT of a European SSA caPability) support action will facilitate the dialogue among key SSA Stakeholders contributing infrastructure elements in Europe by catalysing a common understanding of organisational and governance issues.The STEP support action will strive at providing a technical perspective for the development of SSA data policy. To this aim, actions will be addressed to facilitate the elaboration of coordinated information exchanges, data handling processes, operational interfaces and best practices for the implementation of a SSA capability in Europe.To support the said dialogue with efficient and hands-on appreciation of organisational and data policy issues in a multi-national and complex environment, indicative SSA services will be simulated using a demonstration platform to perform scenario-based assessments.To achieve these goals, the STEP support action will benefit from the fruitful cooperation already established with key SSA Stakeholders and build on the expertise gained through the “Support to Precursor SSA services” FP7 project. STEP will capitalise on the existing EUSC´s assets and unique expertise in data security policies."