All governments of States that are members of the United Nations, in particular those of countries of the UN-European Region, are invited to participate in and contribute to the activities of the European Centre. This results in a geographical domain of potential Member Countries of more than fifty European nations as well as the United States of America, Canada and Israel.

So far, the governments of the following countries are affiliated and represented by National Liaison Officials.

The European Centre is a UN-affiliated intergovernmental organization concerned with all aspects of social welfare policy and research.

• an international centre of applied social science and comparative empirical research on social policy and welfare
• an information and knowledge centre providing social science-supported social policy intelligence through a think-net
• a platform initiating future-oriented public policy debates on social welfare issues within the UN-European Region

• interdisciplinarity
• empirical
• foundation
• policy orientation
• cross-national scope
• partnership network organization
• search for good practices
• focus on inter-sectoral questions

The key unique features of the European Centre can be summarised as follows:

• Coverage of the UN-European Region, i.e."Europe of the 55" including North America as a geographical domain, with various partially overlapping "Europes of Variable Geometry"
• UN-affiliation and independence: intergovernmental status, but not a UN-agency
• Policy expertise focused on integrated policies and inter-sectoral action in overlapping areas between welfare, health, care, labour, migration, population and social development
• Bringing together the worlds of theories and practices

• United Nations European Social Development Programme (UN-ESDP) (1972 - 1974)
• Conference of Ministers for Social Affairs, Warsaw 1987
• Inter-Regional Consultation, Vienna 1987
• Conference of Ministers for Social Affairs, Bratislava 1993, "Welfare in a Civil Society"
• World Summit for Social Development (WSSD), Copenhagen 1995
• Regional Follow-up to the WSSD, Vienna 1998, "Innovative Employment Initiatives"
• Assistance to the Economic Commission for Europe (UN-ECE) for the Second World Assembly on Ageing, Madrid 2002, and the International Plan of Action on Ageing (IPAA)
• Assistance to UN-ECE Geneva for the Ministerial Conference on Ageing, Berlin 2002, and the Regional Implementation Strategy (RIS)
• MA:IMI - Mainstreaming Ageing: Indicators to Monitor Implementation, Follow-up phase of the Regional Implementation Strategy for the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing, 2003 - 2008