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ETRS89 - European Terrestrial Reference System 1989 - is the common European definition of how Europe should connect to the ITRS.
EUREF and ETRS89
In the early 1990's, EUREF stated that Europe should connect to the ITRS (International Terrestrial Reference System) with the epoch 1989.0 and fixed to the stable part of the Eurasian continental plate. The theoretical definition of the European system is called ETRS89. There are a large number of national and European implementations of this system.
EUREF (new window) is a strong cooperation organisation for geodesy in Europe, which is also a subgroup of the International Geodesy Association IAG (International Association of Geodesy (new window).
EUREF has developed recommendations on how nations should connect to ETRS89, and before a country can officially say that it has a national implementation of the ETRS89, it must be approved by EUREF.
Swedish realisations of ETRS89
SWEREF 99 is an approved national implementation of ETRS89. The solution for SWEREF 99 is computed in ITRF97, epoch 1999.5. It was then extrapolated to ETRS89 according to the EUREF guidelines. For national solutions to be approved, strict compliance with EUREF regulations is required, which leads to the different national solutions being consistent at the centimetre level on the stable part of the European plate.
Our older system SWEREF 93 was never approved by EUREF, because the computation was made before EUREF had decided on the computation guidelines. When these later were decided, they differed somewhat from how we had computed SWEREF 93.