The G7 and the European Commission organized a first Information Society Conference in Brussels (25 - 26 February 1995). This led to 11 pilot projects of which number five was: Multimedia Access to World Cultural Heritage. Partly in response to this the European Commission (led by DGXIII) developed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for Multimedia Access to Europe’s Cultural Heritage (1996-1998). The MOU introduced the idea of a need for a Network of Centres of Excellence for Research and Education in Digital Culture that was scheduled to begin in October 1998 in the context of the MEDICI (Multimedia EDucation and employment through Integrated Cultural Initiatives) Framework.

When the promised funding from the European Commission was not forthcoming, a committee with representatives from the Maastricht McLuhan Institute, the Universities of Bologna, the Complutense da Madrid, and the Scuola Normale Superiore continued to develop plans and members for the Network.

In July 2002, E-Culture Net started as a one-year Thematic Network with a consortium of 35 members from 17 countries under the 5th Framework Programme (FP5) of the European Commission Information Society Technology (IST) [IST-2001-37491]. E-Culture Net did a study of previous work and the state of the art (Complete Survey), created roadmaps for research and research matrices, broadband pilot projects, plans for European Masters and Doctorates and created a framework for a Distributed European Electronic Resource (DEER), which are described in the Summary of achievements of the FP5 thematic network. For more details, please visit the website of the FP5 Thematic Network.

The purpose of E-Culture Net was to evolve into a Network of Centres of Excellence (NCE) in the 6thFP. Accordingly, in April 2003, E-Culture Net, with 132 organisations, representing 537 researchers and 87 PhD students submitted a proposal for a Network of Centres of Excellence for Research and Education in Digital Culture in the first call of the 6th Framework Programme (FP6).

Although this proposal was not supported by the European Commission in Luxembourg, the decision was made to continue nonetheless.