The primary aim of ELAN (European Language Activity Network) was to link existing language resources with their potential users throughout Europe.

The project aimed to achieve its objectives through:

• the design of a common query language (ELAN-CQL), which would reinforce or, where necessary, create international standards;
• the implementation of a user community network, which would employ active awareness-raising measures, a clear copyright policy, user support, e-mail user groups and more;
• the provision of standardised resources for the following languages: Albanian, Belgian French, Belorussian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovakian, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish and Uzbek.