The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) initiative will offer researchers a virtual environment with open and seamless services for storage, management, analysis and re-use of research data, across borders and scientific disciplines by federating existing data infrastructures. EOSC is being co-created in a series of funded projects and initiatives from Member States and Associated Countries. These will be reflected on this site in time, but the current focus is on the EOSC Association. The EOSC Association was established as a legal entity on 29th July 2020 with four founding members: GÉANT, CESAER, CSIC and GARR. The Association will sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the European Commission to progress the EOSC partnership, which will bring together all relevant stakeholders to co-design and deploy a European Research Data Commons where data are findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR), and also as open as possible.