The agreement arose from their joint founding membership of EIROforum (http://www.eiroforum.org) and a recognition that, as pan-European organisations, they served essentially the same scientific community.

At a meeting at ESO in Garching during September 2003, it was agreed to establish a number of working groups that would be tasked to explore these synergies in important areas of mutual interest and to make recommendations to both organisations.

The following four working groups have been established so far:

The final reports of the four working groups are now available. The above links go to the working group homepages and to summary pages of the final reports, from which the full report can be retrieved as PDF.