The European Conference on Composite Materials (ECCM-4) will be held for the first time, in Germany after the successes of previous meetings in France and England. The meeting will take place in Stuttgart which is capital of B aden-Wtirttemberg and a centre for new technologies in Germany. Amongst these new technologies, composite materials play a dominant role and it is the aim of the conference to promote scientific discussion of these materials. Polymer matrix composites are well established and lie at the centre of interest so that a great number of contributions forms on plastic matrix and high temperature resin matrix composites. New developments in the area of reinforcement fibres will be discussed in a special section of the poster session. Metal matrix and ceramic matrix composites as well as carbon fibre reinforced carbon are strong candidates for future structural materials. These classes of composites receive wide interest at the conference. The conference organisers received more than 250 abstracts, from which about 160 contributed papers from 20 countries were accepted. In addition to the' 80 oral presentations five invited papers on topics of special interest will be given. The recycling problem of fiber reinforced composites will be discussed in a plenary paper. In the name of all those who were involved in preparation and organisation of this conference, we hope that fruitful discussions but also the social gathering will contribute to further steps in deepening the European cooperation in this fascinating composite research field.