One of the most important concerns of the European Union is the provision and continuous improvement of goods and services within the Europe of today and tomorrow. Among the technologies used for this purpose, the Internet has become a powerful vehicle of services rather than just a repository of information. Many organizations are struggling to put their core business competences on the Internet as a collection of e-services, while customers may retrieve these services from the web and fuse them into combinations of new value-adding e-services in different ways. The 17 articles gathered in this feature issue originate in the 20th EURO Conference, held in Rhodes Islands in July 2004. The main theme of the conference – OR AND THE MANAGEMENT OF ELECTRONIC SERVICES – dealt with the contribution of operational research philosophies, methods and techniques to the design, performance and delivery of e-services. Finally selected papers target towards the academic and practical aspects of e-Commerce, e-Business and e-Government.