Development of particle accelerator technology in Europe: digest of infrastructural and research projects

Large particle accelerator science and technology requires well-coordinated and equally big community efforts to lead to meaningful discoveries. The discovery class accelerator infrastructures are increasingly bigger, more complex, and power hungry, which unavoidably evokes thoughts on the realisability of these trends in the future, concerning finances, social acceptability, and possible need of change of key accelerating technologies in the future. These efforts on the largest machines are accompanied by technical research, innovations and numerous applications of accelerator infrastructures useful for industry, environment protection, safety and health. To maintain the fast pace in these multithreaded developments for the society, a number of large infrastructural and research project are funded by various institutions and organizations, the major being the EC. The largest of these infrastructures are too big to be funded by a single country not to mention a single or even a consortium of laboratories. The article concisely presents some of the major particle accelerator organizations and especially projects recently and/or currently realized in the European research laboratories supported by the efforts from numerable university groups. The aim is to try to show, however subjectively, a dynamic portrait of a vivid European particle accelerators community in their activities to pursue and develop science, discovery class research tools, technology, innovation, transfer to industry, training and education, outreach and dissemination, continuation, but first of all communication, interaction and numerous activities in favor of the society.