GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) is a joint initiative of the European Commission and the European Space Agency, designed to establish a European capacity for the provision and use of operational information services dealing with environment and security.
GMES is based on Space Technology (in particular Earth Observation satellites data) and integration with additional data sources, including ground systems information. Based on a strongly Users’ Requirements driven approach, the services set up thanks to the GMES initiative can provide E2E (End to End) support; furthermore, the GSEs (GMES Service Elements) so developed, highlighted the need to keep investigating and integrating new and up to date technologies in order to keep up the service chains and industry capabilities according to the new Users requirements.
In fact, strong efforts on GMES have been spent to promote a user's service driven approach rather than a technology-push approach. In the light of this priority to collect and strengthen the users’ requirements, the main purpose of the current phase of GMES is the gradual setting up of a number of "initial GMES services", which should move away from the short-term logic of a "project" and evolve into truly long-term sustainable services to the users.
At the time of writing, the European Commission has identified 5 Core Services.

Three Fast Track Services:

• Land monitoring
• Marine
• Emergency Response

• Security Pilot Service
• Global Atmospheric and Air Quality Services