The 12th European Meeting on Ferroelectricity (EMF12) took place from June 26th to July 1st, 2011 at the School of Electronics, Computer Science and Telecoms (ENSEIRB) located on the Bordeaux University campus. This issue has been organized by the ferroelectric team of the Institute of Condensed Matter Chemistry of Bordeaux (ICMCB), a unit belonging to the CNRS, the French National Center for Scientific Research. EMF12 has received numerous supports from public institutions (Local, National and European) and companies including Taylor & Francis Publishing. Among the 500 abstracts received from many countries worldwide, the 11 sessions’ chairs have selected 145 oral contributions and 52 invited speakers who were also partly suggested by the International Steering Committee. The general trend is that recent advances and application driven research needs more than ever the basic knowledge accumulated over the 42 years of existence of EMF. This was also reflected during the 5 plenary lectures which were delivered every morning during the week by H. Schmid, A. Bussmann-Holder, A.R. West, D. Damjanovic and M. Glazer. 350 participants from 35 countries were fully registered for EMF12. To be noted, the contribution of 100 students showed that, being a long standing series of meeting, EMF is attracting the new generation. After Europe, Asia and America (including South America) were the main participants to EMF12. These participants took active part to the sessions and to informal discussions all along the 5 days of the meeting. On Thursday and Friday, the European COST SIMUFER held a workshop which was added to the EMF program. Of the submitted manuscripts, the referees selected 73 papers which are appearing in the present issue of ferroelectrics. We would like to acknowledge the deep commitment of the referees for their on-site work as well as their post-meeting suggestions on every manuscript. A special thank also goes to Pr. H. Schmid whose contribution is opening these proceedings. Not only does he give an overview of the history of multiferroic materials but he shares his experience in sustaining basic research during the decades up to the present boom of this field. We hope the reader will appreciate these proceedings and thank again everybody who contributed to the success of EMF 12.