A study of four European countries (France, United Kingdom, Italy, and Spain) was conducted to gather data on the business start-up process and its impact on the generation of jobs, small business start-up support programs, training and counseling programs, and characteristics of successful business starters. (The original aim of the study was to gather information about the unemployed who start businesses, although such data proved hard to obtain.) Original research and literature searches were used to obtain information. Some of the findings were the following: (1) the total number of businesses started annually in European Community countries exceeds 1 million; (2) these small enterprises account for one-third of all new jobs; (3) a large percentage of the start-ups, including all those undertaken by unemployed business starters, receive financial help from governments, which are allocating substantial sums to these programs; (4) almost half of these newly created businesses fail before the completion of their third year; and (5) effective criteria for selecting the projects to be funded and good back-up training are factors relevant to improving the business survival rate. (KC)