Aiming at solution and prevention of actual and future environmental problems, EU policy resulted in many Directives concerning water and soil. Moreover, 
the Commission of the European Communities composed a paper „Toward a Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection“ and set up a tight time schedule.        
Despite of above mentioned legislative efforts an effective EU-wide approach to the problem of site remediation and groundwater contamination is hindered 
by a number of problems described by the CLARINET Working Group on “Co-ordination of RTD on an European level”:       
·	There is little synergy at EU level between national and EU RTD programmes, leading to a serious overlap of research projects and parallel expenditures 
and less efficient use of limited resources.       
·	The broad dissemination of project results through national RTD programmes at an European level is very modest and fragmented.        
These are the starting points of SNOWMAN-Era-Net: What do we HAVE? – The consortium will produce a sound overview on programmes and their contents and management 
in the field specified. A database containing all relevant information will be produced and analysed. What do we WANT? – A Vision Paper will define the goal of 
European research activities in this specific field of environmental research. How can we GET co-operation NOW? – Specification of next steps, short- and 
medium-term, preparing ground in order to reach the overall goal of ERANET, i.e. to implement and conduct a research programme on bi-/multilateral level throughout 
Europe. Suitable tools (like uniform evaluation criteria etc.) will be developed in Working group meetings and collected within a summary report.       
Knowledge dissemination will be supported by a close linkage with the EUGRIS project. On this portal, all findings produced within SNOWMAN will be published 
and made available to a wider community. On interpersonal level, networking with the European Soil Policy Working Group or Cost activities will be maintained.