1997 Annual Report of the Board to the General Assembly
1997 was an unspectacular working year for EurEta. The fruits of this work will be harvested in the future. Board, Registration Committee and Working Group were active in the building up of good systems for the further development of the Association.
Membership increased during 1997. Belgium joined as a new National Member, so that at the end of the year the following 11 countries were represented in EurEta: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom. The Technologenverband Wien was accepted as a Supporting Member thereby renewing links with the founding member country Austria.
The Register showed a reasonable growth. The number of registered professionals more than doubled in 1997. There were 386 new registrations. At the end of the year we had 588 registrants, i.e. 5 from Denmark, 112 from Finland, 15 from Hungary, 146 from Italy, 17 from Sweden and 293 from Switzerland. We hope, that it will be possible in the near future to register professionals in all member countries and thus to increase the number of registrations substantially.
The annual meeting of the General Assembly, together with meetings of the Board and the Registration Committee, was hosted by our German friends of BVT from 2 to 6 May in Berlin. It dealt besides the statutory items in particular with the admission of Belgium as a new National Member, the re-election of the Board for the term of office 1998-2001, the discussion of the modalities for appropriate turns in the constitution of the Registration Committee, the decision of how the auditing of the accounts should be performed in the future and the acceptance of the Technologenverband Wien as a Supporting Member. The discussion and issue of the Standing Orders had to be postponed because of lack of time. The later circular vote did not reach unanimity so that the General Assembly will have to deal with it once more in 1998.
Klaus Illerhaus of the "Sekretariat der St�ndigen Konferenz der Kultusminister der L�nder in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland" made an interesting speech on the formation systems of Germany where the individual Bundesl�nder have a high autonomy. He pointed out that the use of the word engineer in a title is regulated in the laws of the specific Bundesl�nder.
The cultural program organized for us by our German hosts, especially Horst Ringhandt, and the free time we could spare gave us a good insight into the new old capital of Germany.
The Board met three times in 1997. On 1 March 1997 the Board prepared in Baden, Switzerland, the meeting of the General Assembly. A main item was the detailed regulations in the Standing Orders. The Board also talked about the progress in producing the appendices of the Registration Regulations and issuing the Registration Handbook. In addition the Board discussed the possibility of entering a project into the LEONARDO program of the European Union to describe and match the formation systems of the different European Countries in more detail.
The meetings of the Board before and after the meeting of the General Assembly on 4 and 5 May 1997 in Berlin dealt with the problems of using the EurEta title in some member countries and with the contacts with other international organisations dealing with formation or/and engineering.
From 6 to 8 November the Board met again in Baden, Switzerland, this time accompanied by a meeting of the Registration Committee. The Board formulated its proposals for the revision of the Statutes, the Registration Regulations and the not yet issued Standing Orders. The Board was informed about the progress of the work of the Registration Committee and the working group dealing with the description of national formation systems. Further it discussed the situation in the member countries especially the fact that there was in some countries none or very little registration up to that time. The Board stated that the ambivalent position in some member countries kept potentially interested organisations in other countries from joining EurEta. Since registration developed very differently in the member countries the Board decided to propose to the General Assembly to raise the annual subscriptions of the National Members a little to spread the bearing of the costs of the Association a little bit more broadly. Finally the Board decided to make an effort to increase publicity and public relations work. Mainly it was agreed to prepare a presence on the Internet.
The Registration Committee had two meetings in 1997, one in May in Berlin and a second in November in Baden. In addition to those meetings there was work done by correspondence as well as in the working group which is dealing with the detailed description of formation systems. The examination of applications of special cases for registration probably was the most time consuming job of the members of the Registration Committee. The registration of standard cases proved to be a purely formal matter since the National Members take the full responsibility for those cases. The Chairman of the Registration Committee had, in addition to the handling of the registrations and the participation in the working group, a lot of work on hand with the draft of the Registration Handbook and the Appendices of the Registration Regulations. At the end of the year the Registration Committee had to accept the resignation of its member Horst Ringhandt from Berlin, who had done such a good job in organizing the business meetings there in May. We thank Horst Ringhandt for all he did for EurEta and we wish him and his wife all the best for their future, health and happiness.
The office of the Association is situated at the working place of the President. The slow development of the income of EurEta made it necessary to keep the office work to a minimum in order not to spend more money than is available. To get the necessary tasks done there was a lot of good will and unpaid help involved mainly on the side of the secretariat of the school of the President but also at other places including the office of the chairman of the Registration Committee. A main contribution to the good functioning of the Association on a low cost level was Graham Guest returning to EurEta to act as Secretary and to put down the minutes of our meetings for nothing but his travel expenses. We hope, that there will be in the near future a sufficiently sound financial basis to increase the activity of the Association and to reimburse the secretary better for his work.
The contacts with the National Members and with other international organisations are of high importance for the progress of the Association. On 17 October a meeting between EurEta and the Engineering Council of the United Kingdom took place in London. The main subject of the meeting was to discuss the question which level of British professionals should be eligible for EurEta registration as standard cases. Changes in the different formation systems and in the internal structure made it difficult for the Engineering Council to proceed with registering Incorporated Engineers. From other countries’ viewpoints, this was and is not easily understandable because the registration criteria of EurEta were set up very much in order to fit the formation of this type of engineer. The further development of EurEta into other English speaking countries wil depend very much on progress in this matter.
The contact with WFTO (World Federation of Technology Organizations) was kept up through the President who is also a member of the Board of WFTO. The contacts with FEANI did not make any progress in 1997 probably because of the changes which took place within FEANI (New President, changing the seat from Paris to Brussels, new Secretary General etc.). EurEta is very much interested in developing and keeping good relations with FEANI because we believe that the different levels of engineers have many common interests. Graham Guest has an eye on a larger number of other international organisations including the International Association for Continuing Engineering Education (IACEE) and the European Consortium for the Learning Organisation (ECLO). EurEta is very much in favour of any contacts which serve the interests of our members and of the professionals registered with EurEta.
Over all we can look back at 1997 with good feelings. The Association kept growing slowly but steadily. We express our gratitude to all those who took part in our work or supported our goals by any means. Special thanks go to the hosts of our General Assembly, the German BVT.
Copenhagen, 9 May 1998