The ECCSEL consortium teams up selected Centres of Excellence on CCS across Europe (Norway, Poland, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Greece, UK, Netherlands and Switzerland). The mission is to develop (i.e. build and operate) a European distributed, goal-oriented, integrated Research Infrastructure, to:• Provide a dynamic scientific foundation to respond systematically to the urgent R&D needs in CCS at a pan-European level in a short and long term perspective;• Maintain Europe at the forefront of the international CCS scientific community;• Increase the attractiveness of the European Research Area, reinforcing the research-based clusters and improving their socio-economic impacts;• Optimise the value of the Community financial supportThe existing and new ECCSEL laboratories will be owned by the involved partner institutions. They will, however, be developed and made available for the ECCSEL program, governed by an overall agreement. It is foreseen that ECCSEL will gradually become ready and accessible starting from 2015.The main objective of the ECCSEL Preparatory Phase project (PP) is to address the primary tasks necessary to establish a new distributed, goal-oriented, integrated pan-European infrastructure for state-of-the-art research on technologies enabling CO2 capture, transport and storage (CCS). The PP Consortium has 15 participants from 8 member states and 2 associated countries.The PP will be split into two phases, phase I and II, that will build on each other. The first phase will last for two years and focus on legal, financial and strategic work. It will be structured in six Work Packages; WP1 Legal and governance structure, WP2 Financial strategy, WP3 Infrastructure development plan, WP4 Dissemination and outreach measures, WP5 Implementation strategy, and WP6 Project management and coordination.The most important outcomes of the first phase include:• Identification of suitable legal and governance structure, including rules for IPR, access to and use of the facilities, and HSE standards.• Development of a financial strategy• Review of priority research needs, mapping and subsequent gap analysis to create the Infrastructure development plan.The formal output of phase I will be the Implementation strategy report, which will be developed in WP5.