About Us

EuroGeographics Silver Jublilee

Read our 25th anniversary brochure

History

EuroGeographics has been proudly representing Europe’s National Mapping, Cadastral and Land Registration Authorities for 25 years. The Association builds on the legacy of the Comité Européen des Responsables de la Cartographie Officielle (CERCO) and the Multi-purpose European Ground Related Information Network (MEGRIN), which merged in 2000.

1990

The horizontal reference system (ETRS89) defined with EUREF was officially born and later adopted as a standard by the European Commission.

1993

Delivery of first product, Seamless Administrative Boundaries of Europe (SABE), the predecessor of EuroBoundaryMap.

1997

The Quality Knowledge Exchange Network was established under its original name the Expert Group on Quality.

2000

Merger of MEGRIN and CERCO creates EuroGeographics, the membership association for the European National Mapping, Cadastral and Land Registry Authorities.

2003

Map projections for Europe agreed with EUREF and adopted by the European Commission.

2007

Results from the successful completion of the EuroRoadS and Reference Information Specifications for Europe (RISE) projects used to implement INSPIRE.

2008

Our national elevation data product, EuroDEM completed in record time to provide a digital representation of ground surface topography.

2009

The EuroGeoNames project (2006-2009) is completed as a prototype implementation for an INSPIRE service. This work has been significantly improved designing the GeoLocator service during the European Location Framework project (2013-2016) and continues in the development and publication of a Regional Gazetteer under the umbrella of the Open European Location Services (Open ELS ) Project (2017-2019). The background information has been compiled in the conference paper submitted to the 11th UN Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names.

2010

Becoming an AISBL under Belgian law and moving our head office to Brussels places us at the centre of European policy and decision making.

2011

A partnership agreement with the European Environment Agency means we are facilitating access to members’ data for emergency and crisis response via the Copernicus Emergency Management Service.

2011

The ESDIN Project, co-ordinated by EuroGeographics and supported by funding from the European Commission, helps prepare data for the INSPIRE Directive and the first steps towards European location services from official national sources.

2013

Our 1:1 million scale topographic dataset, EuroGlobalMap is available free of charge for any use under a new open data licence.</p

2013

Successful applications for full membership from the State Authority for Geospatial Information, Albania and the State Committee on Property, the Republic of Belarus mean that EuroGeographics covers the whole of geographical Europe.

2013

EuroGeographics, the PCC, EULIS, ELRA and CLGE sign an agreement on a Common Vision for cooperation on cadastre and land registry.

2013

More than 70 MEPS visit our Maps for the Future event in the European Parliament which highlighted the benefits of the European Location Framework.

2014

Members play a key role in establishing UN-GGIM: Europe for which EuroGeographics provides the secretariat.

2015

We sign a contract to provide European geographic information and related services to the European Commission through Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.

2015

We announce a closer working relationship with EuroSDR which provides a framework for European spatial data research and development.

2015

We took our Maps for Europe exhibition to the European Commission demonstrating how geospatial information from official sources can be used to help deliver EU priorities.

2016

Together with 15 of our members, we help deliver the European Location Framework (ELF) Project which provides a solid foundation on which to build future European location services.

2017

Launch of the Open European Location Services (Open ELS) Project, which is co-financed by the European Union’s Connecting Europe Facility.

2017

Members unanimously approve our renewed strategy setting out a vision for a society empowered by their authoritative geospatial services.