Exo/astrobiology in Europe

The question of the chemical origins of life is engraved in theEuropean scientific patrimony as it can be traced back to thepioneer ideas of Charles Darwin, Louis Pasteur, and more recentlyto Alexander Oparin. During the last decades, the European community of origin of life scientists has organized seven out of the twelve International Conferences on the Origins of Lifeheld since 1957. This community contributed also to enlarge the field of research to the study of life in extreme environmentsand to the search for extraterrestrial life, i.e. exobiology inits classical definition or astrobiology if one uses a more NASA-inspired terminology. The present paper aims to describe the European science background in exo/astrobiology as well as theproject of a European Network of Exo/Astrobiology.