The European landscape of digital repositories for exposing research outputs to the world is growing fast. It develops along three main organisational principles: geographical, disciplinary and technical. Its complexity requires co-ordination in order to overcome boundaries and develop common policies. Federations that contribute to such a co-ordination are emerging, primarily along geographical principles, building regional and national networks. DRIVER involves major and mature federations in Europe, notably Archives Ouvertes in France, DARE in the Netherlands, DINI in Germany and SHERPA in the UK. Belgium serves as a model in DRIVER for a developing federation. DRIVER proposes a European federation of federations – a confederation – in order to foster synergies between existing federations, overcome shortcomings of a simple point-to-point network and stimulate the building of federations in countries where these do not yet exist. In an incremental process, starting from the nucleus of the five above mentioned countries, the other DRIVER partner countries and further European countries shall be involved. Pro-active approaches from several European countries to DRIVER have already led to an informal Network of Content Providers and Network of Correspondents. An advisory board with representatives of subject-based, technical or geographically overarching international stakeholders (standards developers, technical platform developers, service providers and companies) shall contribute a multi-faceted and comprehensive view in the development. Many contacts are already established. A roadmap for building the confederation foresees several thoroughly organized steps, which will result in a foundation event beginning of 2009.