Fire incidence upon southern European forests is expected to worsen as a result of climate change; furthermore, fire prevention methods, priorities, practices and legal frames vary considerably across Europe. Hence the need to reinforce the corner stone of fire fighting, i.e.: fire prevention. However, the baseline knowledge concerning forest fire preventive practices is atomized and not universally accessible to the wide stakeholder community, particularly along the silvicultural chain. This paper presents early results of the EU Support Action EU-FireSmart whose objectives are: (i) to identify the obstacles that hinder the effectiveness of forest fire preventive measures and (ii) to derive recommendations to integrate prevention practices in regular forest management plans. The analysis tackles both the European and the local panorama, by means of test sites in Portugal, Spain, France and Italy. A scientific and technological data base (1400 entries, public by mid 2011) of forest fire prevention methods or practices has been gathered and analysed to ascertain the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the said preventive experiences within eight defined topics (agroforestry and grazing as preventive measures, awareness rising, prevention in the wild land urban interface, etc). The analysis of the DB yields practical recommendations to turn current negative factors into pro-active forest fire prevention measures, also backed up by the preliminary conclusions of a questionnaire designed for experienced forest managers and scientists.