The mission of the the European Patent Office（EPO） is to deliver high-quality patents and efficient services that foster innovation, competitiveness and economic growth. Its main task is to grant European patent according to EPC. 

Moreover, under the PCT, the EPO acts as a receiving office as well as a searching and examining authority. A further task is to perform, on behalf of the patent offices of several member states (Belgium, Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, the Netherlands and San Marino), state of the art searches for the purpose of national procedures. The EPO plays a major role in the patent information area, developing tools and databases.

The number of patent applications filed with EPO grew by 4%, to exceed 181,000. The internal reforms implemented as part of the Quality and Efficiency strategy that prioritized examination work and increased productivity led to a further reduction of volume of pending applications. This allowed to re-orient partially the production leading to further increase of the number of granted patents to almost 138,000.

In response to users' need for timely delivery of services, EPO undertook an initiative, known as Early Certainty, to speed up the patent granting process. Launched in 2014, Early Certainty from Search aimed at increasing legal certainty for applicants by providing a search report with written opinion within 6 months from filing. The programme led to some significant improvements in terms of timeliness. 

In 2019, EPO kept focusing on the timeliness of examination and opposition reduced by 3.7 and 1.7 months respectively in 2019. The percentage of EPO PCT international search reports published along with the application (i.e. A1 publications) remains high above 96 percent in 2019.

In June 2019, EPO published its Strategic Plan 2023. It presents a strategy for a sustainable of the office. The Strategic Plan provides also a clear roadmap for achieving that vision distributed over five goals. It outlines the actions and initiatives to be taken and the improvements required if we are to deliver sustainability and excellence. It also explains how we intend to achieve the five strategic goals not only on behalf of our stakeholders, but in partnership with them too.