The idea of creating the European Dependable Computing Conference (EDCC) was born at the moment when the Iron Curtain fell. A group of enthusiasts, who were pre viously involved in research and teaching in the ?eld of fault tolerant computing in different European countries, agreed that there is no longer any point in keeping pre viously independent activities apart and created a steering committee which took the responsibility for preparing the EDCC calendar and appointing the chairs for the in dividual conferences. There is no single European or global professional organization that took over the responsibility for this conference, but there are three national in terest groups that sent delegates to the steering committee and support its activities, especially by promoting the conference materials. As can be seen from these materi als, they are the SEE Working Group "Dependable Computing" (which is a successor organizationof AFCET)in France, the GI/ITG/GMATechnical Committeeon Depend ability and Fault Tolerance in Germany, and the AICA Working Group "Dependability of Computer Systems" in Italy. In addition, committees of several global professional organizations, such as IEEE and IFIP, support this conference. Prague has been selected as a conference venue for several reasons. It is an easily accessible location that may attract many visitors by its beauty and that has a tradition in organizing international events of this kind (one of the last FTSD conferences took place here).