Euro-Argo is the European contribution to the international Argo array of 3,000 profiling floats measuring temperature and salinity from the surface down to 2,000 m throughout the global oceans. This is the first time a European legal entity (European Research Infrastructure Consortium, ERIC) has been established for in-situ observation of the global oceans. This is a major milestone which will optimize, sustain and improve the European contributions to Argo. Euro-Argo was officially created by the European Commission on May 12, 2014. 9 countries (France, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Greece, Poland and Finland) are all founding members of the Euro-Argo ERIC.