The framework nations place the Eurocorps at the service of the European Union (EU) and NATO, which certified it in 2002 as one of its nine High Readiness Land Headquarters (HRF (L) HQ).

[1] The precedents of the Eurocorps date back to 1989, when German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and the President of the French Republic, François Mitterrand, initiated military cooperation by establishing the Franco-German Defense and Security Council and creating a joint brigade, which became operational in 1991.

Following this approach, on 14 October 1991, France and Germany announced their intention to further strengthen European defense integration through the establishment of a corps headquarters.

[11] During the Franco-German summit in La Rochelle on 22 May 1992, French President François Mitterrand and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl decided to launch the project and to establish the Eurocorps headquarters.

On 1 October of the same year, the Eurocorps headquarters was definitively established in Strasbourg, on the basis of the General Staff activated a few months earlier.

[15] The political statement was subsequently developed in the Luxembourg Report, November 1999, which set out the general guidelines for the aforementioned transformation, once again respecting the dual transatlantic and European orientation, by keeping the Eurocorps at the disposal of NATO and the EU for crisis management operations.

[16] However, a change in government with the 2015 Polish election led to the application for full membership being withdrawn in favour of remaining an associate member.

Today, such affiliation is based on the actual missions in which the Eurocorps has to intervene and its only permanent units are the Headquarters and a multinational support brigade.

Eurocorps is today one of the nine NATO High Readiness Land Headquarters (HRF (L) HQ), having been certified as such in 2003 and is fully integrated in the NATO Response Force (NRF) rotation system,[25] the Eurocorps HQ is also offered to the EU for crisis management operations as a Land Component Command or European Union Battlegroups Headquarters (EUBG).

[27] It is deployed on the authority of the Common Committee representing the member states,[28][29] the Chief of Defence, and the Political Director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Its mission is to ensure the political-military direction and the coordination and conditions of employment of the forces and it is the collegiate body in charge of maintaining relations with Western defense alliances (EU and NATO) and other international organizations.