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GANIL presently offers unique opportunities in nuclear physics and many other fields that arise from not only the provision of low-energy stable beams, fragmentation beams and re-accelerated radioactive species, but also from the availability of a wide range of state-of-the-art spectrometers and instrumentation. A few examples of recent highlights are discussed in the present paper. With the construction of SPIRAL2 over the next few years, GANIL is in a good position to retain its world-leading capability. As selected by the ESFRI committee, the next generation of ISOL facility in Europe is represented by the SPIRAL2 project to be built at GANIL (Caen, France). SPIRAL 2 is based on a high power, CW, superconducting LINAC, delivering 5 mA of deuteron beams at 40 MeV (200 KW) directed on a C converter+ Uranium target and producing therefore more than 1013 fissions/s. The expected radioactive beam intensities in the mass range from A = 60 to A = 140, will surpass by two orders of magnitude any existing facilities in the world. These unstable atoms will be available at energies between few KeV/n to 15 MeV/n. The same driver will accelerate high intensity (100 μA to 1 mA), heavier ions (Ar up to Xe) at maximum energy of 14 MeV/n. Under the 7FP program of European Union called *Preparatory phase*, the SPIRAL2 project has been granted a budget of about 4M€ to build up an international consortium around this new venture. The status of the construction of SPIRAL2 accelerator and associated physics instruments in collaboration with EU and International partners will be presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]