Local excision must involve all tissue invaded on pretreatment examination. For this reason, 4-5 tatoos of mucosa at the tumour border should be performed before the onset of treatment. Next, the long-course radiochemotherapy or short-course radiotherapy is randomly allocated. After 6 weeks interval, the full thickness local excision should be carried out with 1 cm margin. Patients with good pathological response (complete response or downstaging to ypT1 disease)are followed up. Conversion to open surgery is offered to patients with poor pathological response (ypT2-3 or positive margin). Close follow-up is carried out in order to detect an early local recurrence either in a bowel wall or in mesorectal lymph nodes. Rescue surgery is offered in patients with local recurrence.