Recognising the impact of refrigerant emissions on the environment and their strong relation to climate change, the scope of the RealSkillsEurope project is to provide the EU member states with valuable tools not only to safely handle, but more importantly, to prevent harmful refrigerant leakages. As such, the project is dedicated to improve the skills of refrigeration and air conditioning engineers and technicians, by offering a comprehensive set of training material, combining both practical experiences and theoretical knowledge of all project partners. The project has also attempted to determine the amount of refrigerant leakages and their management methods indicated by the national and European laws, across the partner countries. RealSkillsEurope partners are supported by a group of stakeholders (corporations, institutions, organizations, etc.), which provide best practice cases on refrigerant management, review the training materials and contribute to the Best Practice ideas and methods. This paper presents an overview of the refrigerant emissions across European countries and analyses some case studies on refrigerant management. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd.