During the last few years Europe has made enormous progress towards free electron laser (FEL)-based research infrastructures. The FLASH facility [1] at DESY in Hamburg, Germany, has been in user operation since the summer of 2005; FERMI@Elettra [2] in Trieste, Italy, is under construction; the European XFEL [3] in Hamburg will start construction in summer 2008; and several other FEL projects are being prepared in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. In addition, a number of dedicated test facilities have become available, including the photo-injector test facility (PITZ) [4] and the cryomodule test bench (CMTB) [5] at DESY, the HoBiCaT facility for testing superconducting cavities [6] at BESSY, Berlin, Germany, the SPARC facility [7] at INFN-LNF in Frascati, Italy, and the ERL Prototype (ERLP) [8] at Daresbury Laboratory, UK. They have been strongly supported by the national stakeholders in order to prepare the design of new FEL sources.