DESY is a national research centre with long-standing experience in accelerator design and operating RIs for high energy physics (HERA) and synchrotron radiation research (DORIS, PETRA, FLASH) with presently approximately 1000 and 1900 users per year, respectively, from all over the world. DESY has been one of the leaders in the development of the two future international RIs, X-Ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) and the International Linear Collider (ILC).

The design and construction of accelerators and beamlines at DESY lead to close collaboration with the European industry and long-standing experience in knowledge and technology transfer between public laboratory and industry. Recently DESY has been a driving force towards the foundation of
EIFast, the "European Industry Forum for Accelerators with SCRF Technology" in October 2005, which is supported by more than 30 companies, many of which are SMEs, and research institutions from 9 European countries. DESY is currently participating in Physics Infrastructures activities with I3 (IA-SFS, CARE, HADRON PHYSICS, EGEE, EUDET) and is coordinating the two Design Studies EUROFEL and EUROTEV. Since the Framework Programme 3 (1990) DESY receives EC funding for the Transnational Access to the synchrotrons of HASYLAB.