"EURO4M will develop the capacity for, and deliver the best possible and most complete (gridded) climate change time series and monitoring services covering all of Europe. These will describe the evolution of the Earth system components by seamlessly combining two different but complementary approaches: regional observation datasets of Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) on the one hand and model based regional reanalysis on the other. The project will extend, in a cost effective manner, European capacity to systematically monitor climate variability and change (including extremes) on a range of space and time scales. EURO4M will reach out with innovative and integrated data products and climate change services to policy-makers, researchers, planners and citizens at European, national and local levels. This will directly address the needs of, for instance, the European Environment Agency for their environmental assessment reports - and even provide online reporting during emerging extreme events. As the primary source of timely, targeted and reliable information about the state of the climate in Europe, the suggested collaborative project is an important building block for GMES. The project will integrate and extend core services activities on ECVs, specifically developing the capacity required for state-of-the-art user-oriented products for monitoring of climate change. EURO4M has the potential to evolve into a future GMES service on climate change monitoring that is fully complimentary and supporting the existing operational services."