The European conference situationin the general area of software science has longbeen considered unsatisfactory. A fairlylarge number of small and medi- sized conferences and workshops take place on an irregular basis, competing for high-quality contributions and for enough attendees to make them ?nancially viable. Discussions aiming at a consolidation have been underway since at least 1992, with concrete planning beginning in summer 1994 and culminating in a public meeting at TAPSOFT’95 in Aarhus. On the basis of a broad consensus, it was decided to establish a single annual federated spring conference in the slot that was then occupied by TAPSOFT and CAAP/ESOP/CC, comprising a number of existing and new conferences and covering a spectrum from theory to practice. ETAPS’98, the ?rst instance of the European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, is taking place this year in Lisbon. It comprises ?ve conferences (FoSSaCS, FASE, ESOP, CC, TACAS), four workshops (ACoS, VISUAL, WADT, CMCS), seven invited lectures, and nine tutorials.