The EOSC pilot project will support the first phase in the development of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) as described in the EC Communication on European Cloud Initiatives [2016]. 

• It will establish the governance framework for the EOSC and contribute to the development of European open science policy and best practice;
• It will develop a number of pilots that integrate services and infrastructures to demonstrate interoperability in a number of scientific domains; and
• It will engage with a broad range of stakeholders, crossing borders and communities, to build the trust and skills required for adoption of an open approach to scientific research.

These actions will build on and leverage already available resources and capabilities from research infrastructure and e-infrastructure organisations to maximise their use across the research community.
The EOSCpilot project will address some of the key reasons why European research is not yet fully tapping into the potential of data.  In particular, it will:

• reduce fragmentation between data infrastructures by working across scientific and economic domains, countries and governance models, and
• improve interoperability between data infrastructures by demonstrating how data and resources can be shared even when they are large and complex and in varied formats. 

In this way, the EOSC pilot project will improve the ability to reuse data resources and provide an important step towards building a dependable open-data research environment where data from publicly funded research is always open and there are clear incentives and rewards for the sharing of data and resources.