Due to climatic conditions, Southern Europe is at the limit of the rice cropping area. All European rice cropping regions share common constraints (short vegetative period and cold tolerance) but also have specific problems (cryptogamic or insect pests, salt tolerance, grain quality...). So, European rice breeding has specific needs. So, the European Commission has supported a research program for the characterization of available European rice genetic resources in order to evaluate their diversity and structure. The evaluation of about 50 agronomic, morphological and technological traits of 430 genotypes was conducted from 1996 to 2000 in France, Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal. The obtained data show that genotype X environment interactions are low and can be neglected for most of observed traits, and can be used to build up a reliable database very useful to breeders.