The EUropean Clusters Excellence Labelling Structure (EUCLES), an international non-profit association (AISBL under Belgium law) was officially created on February 12th 2021 with the publication of a royal decree, bringing together national and regional clusters organisations to work for the continuous improvement of the European clusters labelling system.
 
The constitutive general assembly was held on the 14th of December 2020, enabling to elect its first board of directors. Hervé FLOCH, President of the « Europe » committee of Association Française des Pôles de Compétitivité (AFPC) was elected as the first Chairman of EUCLES, alongside Jolita Razumiene (MITA, Lithuania) and Antonio Novo-Guerrero (FENAEIC, Spain) as vice-presidents and Krzysztof Krystowski (Klastry Polskie, Poland) as treasurer.
 
With the help of a pool of experts, EUCLES will assess the management quality of clusters organisations in order to award a label of excellence to the recipients (bronze, silver or gold). EUCLES should be ready to operate in the summer 2021 and will take over the European Secretariat for Cluster Analysis (ESCA). In order to be ready to operate, EUCLES and its members are currently very active as an agreement is under discussion to define and frame the labelling process several working-groups have been launched on different topics (communication and prospection, indicators, recognition of the labels).