A HUF 100bn laser facility that will open new avenues to reveal the secrets of matter on ultra-short timescales, Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai announced, after a decision by an EU directorate in Prague. The Hungarian city of Szeged will focus on the attosecond laser science part of the ELI project, conducting temporal investigation of electron dynamics in atoms, molecules, plasmas and solids at attosecond scale. Prague will host the high energy beam science part of the project, and laser-matter interaction in an energy range where relativistic laws could cease to be valid will be explored in Bucharest in the ultra high field science part of ELI.