The Mercator European Research Centre is situated in the minority-language province of Fryslân. As a research institute, Mercator wants to make use of the excellent opportunities the Frisian situation has to offer as a living laboratory on multilingualism. At the same time, Mercator makes state-of-the-art research and interesting developments from other minority language regions available to relevant stakeholders in Fryslân.

Mercator uses its own network and that of others to introduce researchers and other interested parties to the bilingual society that is Fryslân. In recent years, for example, Mercator has welcomed to Leeuwarden different international teacher groups in primary and secondary education, delegates from Language Academies throughout the world, and researchers who needed support for their research on multilingualism or who traveled to Fryslân for the many international conferences that Mercator (co)organised in local venues and with local suppliers. On top of that, Mercator was the internship company for several international internships. 

The Mercator European Research Centre is firmly embedded in European networks and research groups. For example, Mercator is a member of the board of the European Civil Society Platform for Multilingualism (ECSPM), an alliance for the languages spoken in Europe, as well as for research, policies on and practices of multilingualism, making possible the cooperation between European, national, and international networks, organisations, federations and research units (university centres and institutes). 

The Mercator European Research Centre is also a long-standing associate member of the Network to Promote Linguistic Diversity (NPLD). Mercator’s representative is a member of the steering committee of the NPLD. NPLD is a European wide network working in the field of language policy and planning for Constitutional, Regional and Small-State Languages across Europe. NPLD includes governments both national and regional, universities and associations as its members. In 2023, Mercator joined the NPLD University Network (UniNet), a network of universities and research institutions active in the fields of national minorities, multilingualism, minority languages, language rights, language policy and language education.  

The Mercator European Research Centre joined the LITHME Network in 2020 (Language In The Human Machine Era). The focus of LITHME lies on the ethical implications of emerging language technologies. LITHME has members from every European Union member state, plus a number of countries outside of the EU. It is a so-called COST Network (European Cooperation in Science and Technology), funded through the EU Framework Programme Horizon 2020. 

Since 2014, Mercator has been a member of the LANGSCAPE Network. LANGSCAPE is an international research network engaging in plurilingualism, language education and language learning, coordinated by the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. One of the successful projects that emerged from this research network is the Erasmus+ project ENROPE, which Mercator carried out in cooperation with eight universities from six European countries and which was assessed as excellent. 

The longest-running partnership of the Mercator European Research Centre is the Mercator Network. This Network was founded in 1987, and at that time consisted of three institutions: Mercator Education (the forerunner of Mercator European Research Centre), Mercator Legislation (CIEMEN/ University of Barcelona, Spain) and Mercator Media (University of Aberystwyth, United Kingdom). Since then the network has existed in various forms, and gradually expanded with the Research Institute for Linguistics - Eötvös Loránd Research Network (Budapest, Hungary) and the Institute for Slavic and Baltic languages, Finnish, Dutch and German (University of Stockholm, Sweden). Together, the partners produce the Mercator Network Newsletter every month, with news on the activities of the Mercator Network research institutes and the latest news on education and policy changes related to minority languages in Europe. On average, the newsletter has about 2,000 subscribers.