An essential part of the ESFRI roadmap to foster the European science in the field of large laser systems, the project ELI-Beamlines is to be built in the Czech Republic. The project has been submitted by the Institute of Physics to the European Commision and it is expected to be financed from the structural funds just due. The facility, which consists of several laser beamlines delivering a very high power density (up to 1023 W/cm2) on the target in a repetitive regime, should be ready by 2015. A smaller sister-project HiLASE should support the ELI-Beamlines by providing high average power repetitive ns lasers as an intermediate pumping element of the ELI laser chains, but, at the same time, of interest for various laser assisted technologies. and Karel Rohlena.