The EU has made significant progress in CCS as a bridging technology for combating climate change, but this must now accelerate and be spread evenly throughout EU Member States and Associated Countries. In this context, CO2GeoNet, CO2NET EAST and ENeRG are joining forces, pooling their expertise and building on their Networking experience to form CGS Europe, a unique concerted European reference point on CO2 storage.The objective of CGS Europe is to build a credible, independent and representative pan-European scientific body of expertise on CO2 geological storage that will: (i) create a durable networking of research capacity on CO2 storage in Europe, (ii) liaise and coordinate its activities with other stakeholders, including the ZEP Technology Platform, (iii) facilitate the large-scale demonstration and industrial deployment of CCS, (iv) support the implementation of the EU Directive on the geological storage of CO2 and other regulatory regimes.This will be achieved by: (i) setting up coordination and integration mechanisms between the CO2GeoNet Association and the 23 other participants, thus covering most of Europe with 24 EU Member States and 4 Associated Countries, (ii) setting up links and cooperation with other initiatives at national, European and international levels, (iii) preparing a framework enabling the consortium to be independent from EC funding after the end of the project.CGS Europe will strive to compile and structure the existing research results, policy and regulations in a centralised knowledge repository to enable stakeholders to easily find pertinent information. Knowledge development will be ensured by the sharing of good practices, the assessment of research needs and the fostering of new research projects. A major effort will be dedicated to knowledge dissemination and capacity building, aiming at giving impartial and understandable information to the different stakeholders, according to their specific needs in each country.