The data infrastructure in Central and Eastern Europe: Current situation and prospects It took about two decades to implement the idea of data archives in western Europe. When the first European data archives were founded in the sixties, social sciences were considered data poor and an infrastructure for social research was weak. As regards Eastern Europe on the one hand we are facing similar problems, but on the other hand there are completely new preconditions for setting up a data archive. New technologies and the World Wide Web have opened up undreamed-of possibilities for creating a social data archive. Additionally, the new archives can take advantage of the experience and support of the well established data archives. This presentation will describe the development of data services for social sciences in the East European countries and it will discuss the need of creating special networks and experts groups to concentrate the efforts in the field of the development of archive tools and meta data production. It will introduce the activities of the East European Data Archive Network (EDAN). Larisa Kosova from the Russian Data Archive (RSDA) and Janez Stebe from the Slovenian Archive (ADP) will report on their experiences and new challenges.