Status of CERN

The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) operates one of the largest laboratories in High Energy Physics in Geneva, Switzerland. It serves more than 5000 users of whom the main fraction comes from Europe. It is financed by the 20 European Members States but receives also major contributions from the USA, Japan and Russia for the construction of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which will provide proton - proton collisions with a centre-of-mass energy of 14 TeV. In addition, substantial contributions to LHC are made by Canada and India. A large number of states participates in the financing of the detectors used in the general and LHC physics programmes, CERN providing only a fraction of this budget. Given the importance of the contribution of Japan, Russia and USA, these states have observer status at the CERN Council and participate in the sessions of the Committee of Council when dealing with LHC matters. Further observer states are the European Union, Israel and Turkey. A summary of the accelerator complex is given in point 2 and of the physics programme in point 3. The present and planned accelerator R&D is outlined in point 4.