Creating european cohesion: The challenge of ELFE

In Europe and throughout the world, major areas of nuclear physics are in a process of change and re-orientation. A climate of change offers new opportunities, either for success or for failure if strategies are inadequately gauged to the realities of today. As in the case of particle physics and astronomy, nuclear physics is scientifically driven to build and exploit larger accelerator facilities and more sophisticated experimental equipment. The increasing scale of resources required for such enterprises is expanding beyond the means of any single national research council in Europe. For the nuclear physics community this offers a formidable challenge to develop new models of European collaboration and coordinated planning.