TOOLS Eastern Europe 2002 was the third annual conference on the technology of object-oriented languages and systems. It was held in Eastern Europe, more specifically in Sofia, Bulgaria, from March 13 to 15. In my capacity of program chairman, I could count on the support from the Programming Technology Lab of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel to set up the technical program for this con ference. We managed to assemble a first class international program committee composed of the following researchers: Mehmet Aksit (Technische Hogeschool Twente, Netherlands) Jan Bosch (Universiteit Groningen, Netherlands) Gilad Bracha (Sun Microsystems, USA) Shigeru Chiba (Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan) Pierre Cointe (Ecole des Mines de Nantes, France) Serge Demeyer (Universitaire Instelling Antwerpen, Belgium) Pavel Hruby (Navision, Denmark) Mehdi Jazayeri (Technische Universitiit Wien, Austria) Eric Jul (University of Copenhagen, Denmark) Gerti Kappel (University of Linz, Austria) Boris Magnusson (University of Lund, Sweden) Daniela Mehandjiiska-Stavreva (Bond University, Australia) Tom Mens (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium) Christine Mingins (Monash University, Australia) Ana Moreira (Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal) Oscar Nierstrasz (Universitiit Bern, Switzerland) Walter Olthoff (DFKI, Germany) Igor Pottosin (A. P. Ershov Institute of Informatics Systems, Russia) Atanas Radenski (Winston-Salem State University, USA) Markku Sakkinen (University of Jyvilskyl!l. , Finland) Bran Selic (Rational, Canada) Andrey Terehov (St.