It was with great pleasure that, on behalf of the entire organizing committee, I welcomed participants to EDCC-4, the Fourth European Dependable Computing Conference, held for the ?rst time in France. The fourth issue of EDCC carried on the traditions established bythe previous conferences in this series: EDCC-1 was held in Berlin (Germany) in October 1994, EDCC-2 in Taormina (Italy) in October 1996, and EDCC-3 in Prague (Czech Republic) in September 1999. EDCC evolved from a merger of tow other conference series at the moment when the Iron Curtain fell. One of these, known as the �International Conf- ence on Fault-Tolerant Computing Systems�, was organized during the period 1982–1991, bythe German Technical Interest Group �Fault-Tolerant Computing Systems�. The other series, known as the �International Conference on Fault- Tolerant Systems and Diagnostics�, was organized during the period 1975–1990 in the former Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, and the former GDR. The c- position of the EDCC steering committee and the organizing committees of the successive issues of the conference have mirrored the East–West uni?cation ch- acter of the conference series. The EDCC conference is becoming a unique meeting point for researchers and practitioners from all over the world in the ?eld of Dependable Systems. It is organized bythe SEE Working Group �Dependable Computing� in France, the GI/ITG/GMA Technical Committee on Dependabilityand Fault Tolerance in Germany, and the AICA Working Group �Dependability of Computer Systems� in Italy. Furthermore, committees of several global professional organizations, such as IEEE and IFIP, support the conference.