Small businesses are dominating in Latvia and the situation is closely similar in the other European countries. Therefore, it is crucially important to focus on different issues with regard to small enterprises. The aim of this paper is to characterize the situation in one of the priority areas of the European Union – small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). The author has perused various documents e.g. the guide of Commission's modern SME policy, the European Charter for Small Enterprises and has provided main conclusions. The quality management systems are the most internationally well-known and widely implemented standards ever. Regardless of size or sector of organization these systems could be useful in many different ways. Within this paper SWOT analysis is done and advantages and disadvantages of QMS implementation in SME’s are pointed out.