ANAEE will provide Europe with a distributed and coordinated set of experimental, analytical and modelling platforms to analyse and predict in a precise manner the response of the main continental ecosystems to environmental and land use changes. ANAEE will consist of highly equipped in natura and in vitro experimental platforms associated with sophisticated analytical and modelling platforms coupled to networks of instrumented observation and monitoring sites throughout Europe.ANAEE will bring together, for the first time, the major experimental, analytical and modelling facilities in ecosystem science, agriculture and forestry in Europe. In uniting under the same umbrella and with a common vision these highly instrumented ecosystem research facilities, ANAEE will be a key instrument in both structuring and improving the European Research Area in this field. ANAEE will be the reference point for rigorously assessing ecosystem services and their responses to management by agriculture, forestry and to global change. In the context of the development of European bio-economy, critical political, environmental and scientific questions related to ecosystems functioning and services will be answered. ANAEE will therefore be a key instrument for the implementation of forthcoming national and joint programming initiatives notably the JPI “Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change” (FACCE-JPI).