Over a few decades, European and national institutions have made substantial R&D efforts in the field of Earth observation. These efforts have resulted in tremendous achievements but the services and products developed during this period had limitations that were inherent to R&D activities (e.g. lack of service continuity on the long-term). The idea for a global and continuous European Earth observation system was developed under the name of Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) which was later re-branded into Copernicus after the EU became directly involved in financing and development. It follows and greatly expands on the work of the previous €2.3 billion European Envisat programme which operated from 2002 to 2012.