ESCAPE is a mission proposed to ESA, in response to the M5 call, that will quantitatively estimate the amount of escape of the major atmospheric components as neutral and ionised species, escaping from the Earth as a magnetised planet. The goal is to understand the importance of each escape mechanism, its dependence on solar and geomagnetic activity, and to infer the history of the Earth's atmosphere over a long time period. The ESCAPE mission proposal successfully passed the first technical and programmatic screening by ESA and is now in the scientific assessment phase.