As announced in the Organisation Release eso1440, the ESO Council has approved the construction of the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) in two phases and authorised spending of around one billion euros for the first phase. This first phase will cover the construction costs of a fully working telescope with a suite of powerful instruments and first light targeted in ten years. The context for this decision is reported in an article (PDF) in the December issue of The Messenger.