The event is being held under the auspices of Denmark’s six-month presidency of the EU, which began in January 2012. The conference is organised by the European Commission (GMES bureau), EUMETSAT, the European Environment Agency (EEA) and the European Space Agency (ESA), and brings together representatives from public administrations and the EU, international organisations, industry and end users. The purpose of the conference is to highlight the economic impact and strategic value of the European Earth monitoring programme (GMES) and to give the users' perspective of the benefits of GMES for Europe. The conference is focusing on:

• The economic potential of GMES services (opportunities for European growth and jobs)
• Support to the green economy for sustainable economic development
• How Earth observation supports the health, energy, agriculture, fisheries, and ecosystem sectors
• The challenges of assessing climate change effects scientifically and economically
• GMES data and disaster management

EUMETSAT Director-General Alain Ratier gave an address during the opening session, as well as a presentation in the first session related to GMES and opportunities for European growth and jobs. The main message to be conveyed is that GMES has created the building blocks to deliver benefits to European citizens. In particular, in the area of ocean and atmosphere monitoring, the current MyOcean and MACC GMES services are able to forecast the state of the oceans and of the atmosphere in a way that supports decision-making in many different policy areas. These forecasting and monitoring capacities rely heavily on the sustained delivery of observations, both from space and in-situ. EUMETSAT is the operational agency in charge of the operations of the GMES Sentinels delivering information for ocean and atmosphere monitoring with Sentinel-3, -4 and -5.

On June 5th, Dr. Johannes Schmetz, Head of the Meteorological Division at EUMETSAT, made a presentation during the session on climate change, in which he highlighted EUMETSAT’s contribution to global observations from space for monitoring the climate and the environment, and how it benefits GMES and its users.