It acted to facilitate links and communications with the European institutions, the Council of Europe, the OSCE, and UN and UNESCO.
It spoke on behalf of Europe's 50 million speakers of regional or minority languages.
However, with the cut in its core funding, EBLUL was finally closed by a decision of its board of directors on 27 January 2010.
The main reason given was that "the funding mechanism of such an organisational model [was] not suitable in current circumstances".
To date, ELEN represents 44 languages with 60 member organisations in 20 European states.