A session entitled »From the Atlantic to beyond the Bug River– Finding and defining the Federmesser-Gruppen / Azilian on the North European Plain and adjacent areas« was held at the 17th congress of the Union Internationale des Sciences Préhistoriques et Protohistoriques in September 2014 in Burgos on behalf of the U.I.S.P.P. commission »The Final Palaeolithic of Northern Eurasia«. In this volume we present some of the contributions to this session that explore different aspects of the behaviour of mid-Lateglacial hunter-gatherer groups in Western and Central Europe as a beginning for comparing the differently defined archaeological units. How distinct and / or related were those groups over time and pace?