The GRB followup Euro-US Consortium: results from the ESO telescopes

In October 1997, the Italian and Dutch GRB teams started a collaboration on ESO optical follow-up of rapidly and accurately localized GRBs. Subsequently, starting April 1, 2000, this collaboration was extended to astronomers from other countries, who contributed their expertise for the creation of a Consortium committed to the study of GRB counterparts and host galaxies at optical and near-infrared wavelengths. The collaboration aims at the joint exploitation of the observations taken within an ESO Large Programme approved for the two-year period April 1, 2000 - March 31, 2002. Here we describe history and organization of this Consortium, the goals of the ESO Large Programme, and the main results obtained up to now with ESO telescopes.