The ALMA Regional Centres (ARCs) form the interface between the ALMA observatory and the user community from the proposal preparation stage to actual distribution of data and subsequent analysis. As such, the ARCs provide critical services to both the ALMA operations in Chile and to the user community. These services can be divided into core services and additional services. The core service are financed by the ALMA operations budget and are critical to a successful operation of ALMA. They are contractual obligations and must be deliverd to the ALMA project. The additional services are not funded by the ALMA project and are not contractual obligations, but are critical to achieve ALMAs full scientific potential. A distributed network of ARC nodes (with ESO being the central node) is currently being set up throughout Europe at the following seven locations: Manchester, Leiden, Bonn-Bochum-Cologne, Ondrejov-Prague, Onsala, Grenoble, and Bologna. These ARC nodes are working together with the central node at ESO and provide both core and additional services to the ALMA user community. In this talk I present the European ARC, and how it operates in Europe to support the ALMA community, I show how this model, although complex in nature, is turning into a very successful one, providing a service to the scientific community which has been so far highly appreciated.