The Commission is supporting the development of Europeana to serve as a multilingual internet access point to cultural collections from all Member States as part of its Digital Libraries Initiative (DLI). Europeana aims to make Europe's diverse cultural and scientific heritage easier and more interesting to use online for work, leisure and/or study. It builds on Europe's rich heritage, combining multicultural and multilingual environments with technological advances and new business models.

EDLocal is one of a number of projects which have been funded to help develop Europeana and it has a special focus on digital content provided by institutions at the local and regional levels.