The Evolution Arti?cielle cycle of conferences was originally initiated as a forum for the French-speaking evolutionary computation community. Previous EA m- tings were held in Toulouse (EA'94), Brest (EA'95, LNCS 1063), NË?mes (EA'97, LNCS 1363), Dunkerque (EA'99, LNCS 1829), and ?nally, EA 2001 was hosted by the Universit´e de Bourgogne in the small town of Le Creusot, in an area of France renowned for its excellent wines. However, the EA conferences have been receiving more and more papers from the international community: this conference can be considered fully internat- nal, with 39submissions from non-francophonic countries on all ?ve continents, out of a total of 68. Out of these 68 papers, only 28 were presented orally (41%) due to the formula of the conference (single session with presentations of 30 minutes) that all participants seem to appreciate a lot. The Organizing Committee wishes to thank the members of the International Program Committee for their hard work (mainly due to the large number of submissions) and for the service they rendered to the community by ensuring the high scienti?c content of the papers presented. Actually, the overall quality of the papers presented was very high and all 28 presentations are included in this volume, grouped in 8 sections which more or less re?ect the organization of the oral session: 1. Invited Paper: P. Bentley gave a great talk on his classi?cation of int- disciplinary collaborations, and showed us some of his work with musicians and biologists.