EFTEON will provide a suite of relevant long term environmental observational and data management infrastructure that to add value to existing research efforts within the landscape and facilitate further ecological and socioecological research.

The main role of EFTEON is to provide the observational and data management facilities, it is not a research funding facility, although support would be provided for funding applications within EFTEON landscapes

Data archaeology is a key component in the EFTEON concept and data archiving and provision facilities are being implemented.

As a research infrastructure the EFTEON role is to facilitate research through provision of infrastructure to the research community, value is obtained through researchers using the infrastructure to advance their own research