Through national initiatives and projects funded by the European Commission a number of e-Infrastructures have evolved in Europe. Over a number of years different grids have matured from test and proof-of-concept to full-fledged production infrastructures with large-scale research collaborations dependent on their existence. In this article the European Grid Initiative Design Study and the vision to create a sustainable organisation for European e-Infrastructure and its role in the HPC ecosystem is presented and discussed. The EGI Blueprint is presented and found to be complementary to the initiative for extreme scale computer facilities in Europe represented by the Partnership for Advance Computing in Europe.