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EL_07_02_BoA_003
EUROLAB Board of Administrators’ Meeting
Date :
February 27, 2012 from 12:00 to 17.00
February 28, 2012 from 9.00 to 16.00
Venue :
CEOC/EUROLAB premises, Rue du Commerce 20-22, B-1000, Brussels
Please Note: Decision taken during the meeting are highlighted in the text in red, actions necessary are highlighted in blue. At the end of the document you will find a table listing all decisions and actions once more with persons in charge and deadlines.
1. Welcome and practical arrangements
The EUROLAB president opened the meeting and welcomed the participants.
Participants: Jiří Sobola (President), Jeff Llewellyn (Vice President), José Duarte, José Luis Sanchez Alvarez-Campana, Jan Basten, Manfred Golze, Ömer Güzel, Jean-Luc Laurent, Phillippe Dewolfs, Dagmar Kotová, Drewin Nieuwenhuis, Franziska Kassler
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Apologies: Irache Visiers, Guy Jacques
2. Approval of the Agenda
The agenda was approved.
It was decided to put the item ’Budget’ on the agenda of the second day of the meeting. The point was made that the budgets for both 2010 and 2011 will have to be formally approved by the next General Assembly after they have been distributed among the Board members for approval.
The suggestion was made to focus during this meeting more in strategic than on operational issues
3. Approval of the minutes of the last meeting in Brussels (EL_07_02_BoA_069)
After the following comments were discussed the minutes of the last meeting were approved.
o Comments Manfred Golze:
o
o Item 6: Manfred Golze submitted a comment which was already drafted for EUROLAB Germany.
o Item 9: The name Van de Kreeke should be replaced by the name Brian Brookman
o Item 10: Manfred Golze only prepared a short report for TCQA and not one directly aiming at the members of the ad hoc strategy group. However, Lorens Sibbesen, the chair of the ad hoc Strategy Group is also a member of TCQA and has therefore received the report anyway.
Comments Ömer Güzel:
o Short activities reports: Terms and definitions should be provided for these reports as well as terms of references and objectives for each of these activities.
o Sector schemes: EUROLAB should take action with regards to this issue. Manfred Golze informed the group that he has already contacted someone to prepare a note on this issue.
o
SWOT analysis: the topic is not on the agenda but it should have been prepared for this meeting. It was decided to do the analysis anyway.
3. EUROLAB membership issues
Jan Basten informed the Board members about the latest membership developments.
SILAB - membership resignation
Slovenia has withdrawn its membership for unknown reasons. It was decided to send them a letter and inform them that some members, including Slovenia, will have to pay less membership fees in the future. The new fee structure will be considered during the next General Assembly. This might lead to them reconsidering their position.
The EUROLAB Secretariat will prepare the draft letter to SILAB.
LATLAB – membership resignation – November 2010
LATLAB has already cancelled its membership in 2010 because they were of the assumption that they would not be able to pay the membership fee. It was decided to send them the same letter as to SIILAB.
The EUROLAB Secretariat will prepare the draft letter to LATLAB.
Letter to BULLAB (Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science)
A letter has been send to the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science but EUROLAB has not received any reply yet.
Contact with ALPI
ALPI has informed EUROLAB that they will pay their 2010 membership fee in two instalments. The first one should have been paid in February, the second instalment will be paid in June. However, they are not sure yet if they will be able to pay the membership fee for 2011. Jan Basten might visit ALPI in the near future in order to discuss further steps.
Regulation on Reimbursement of Travel and Accommodation costs
It was decided to create an annex with terms of references to the regulation in reimbursement of travel and accommodation costs. An example for such a term of reference is a guideline for ‘what is reasonable’. The basis for these terms of references can be documents used by other European organisations.
EUROLAB members who want to be reimbursed for their travel and accommodation costs will always have to report about their meetings and they will have to send in all the invoices to the EUROLAB Secretariat. Before the reimbursement process can be started the Board needs to decide on the percentage of costs that will be reimbursed and it needs to decide which events are eligible for reimbursement. The list of eligible meetings needs to be reconsidered during each board meeting because new meetings might have been scheduled in the meantime. However, this will make it more difficult to calculate the budget beforehand.
The EUROLAB Secretariat will discuss the meetings list with Jan Basten and it will prepare a draft budget. (note: done; see annex)
The list and the budget will then be discussed again during the Board meeting in June. By that time actual figures should be available.
The copy of all reservations will have to be sent to the EUROLAB Secretariat.
The people that will represent EUROLAB during the meetings will have to be informed that they are listed.
The Secretariat will have to remind the delegates to make their travel arrangements in time in order to benefit from cheaper prices.
The Board will inform the Secretariat about their meetings in the future. The list of events will be reviewed during every Board meeting.
5. A new organisational structure for EUROLAB (Short reports)
EAAB: There has so far been no response from Guy Jacques regarding the EAAB candidacy.
The EUROLAB Secretariat will therefore contact the EAAB Secretariat informing them about the new member. (note: done)
ILAC: Jean Marc Aublant will resign. In the future he can either help the new member or EUROLAB would ask him to continue with the laboratory committee. Generally EUROLAB should try to send at least two representatives to ILAC. The Accreditation Issues Committee might be of interest for EUROLAB because this is where all the technical issues regarding laboratories are discussed. However, first of all it would be interesting to know how all the different ILAC working groups are working together. In the future the communication between the EUROLAB representatives in ILAC and the rest of EUROLAB will have to improve. This means that every representative will have to send in reports.
It was decided that both Jean Marc Aublant and Jiri Sobola will attend the next ILAC General Assembly. Jiri Sobola will participate in the actual General Assembly (two days) while Jean Marc Aublant will participate in the technical committees.
In April there will be an ILAC conference (no General Assembly) in Prague. Jean Marc Aublant can use this opportunity to visit the ILAC Laboratory Committee.
Jeff Llewellyn would prefer it not to be the Board member who is responsible for ILAC. Instead Jiri Sobola will now be responsible, while Jean Marc will maintain his position achieved in ILAC committees so far.
6. EUROLAB-EFNDT cooperation
It was decided not to take any action yet with regards to EFNDT but to wait until their new president has been elected. Then a meeting between the presidents of EUROLAB, EFNDT and CEOC International will be organised. The new EFDNT president will also be invited to the EUROLAB General Assembly in Prague.
It was suggested that in the future some EFNDT members could participate in TCQA meetings.
7. EUROLAB elections (Board members)
· The following positions of Board Members will have to be (re-)elected during the next General Assembly:
·
· Jiri Sobola: candidate for Board Member
· Jan Basten: candidate for Board Member
· Jean-Luc Laurent: candidate for Board Member
· José Duarte: will leave the Board
· Guy Jaque: will leave the Board
· Ömer Güzel: candidate for the Board
The EUROLAB Secretariat will send out a call for candidates together with the revised table of Board Members (see annex) and a reference to the rules regarding membership in the Board.
8. Handbook on Occupational Health in Laboratories
The Board has decided that this Handbook on Occupational Health in Laboratories is a project worth investing in as all EUROLAB members will benefit from it.
Jan Basten will go through the text one more time and highlight all the parts in it that refer exclusively to Dutch law. These parts can then be replaced by references to European legislation. The same will have do be done for Dutch web links, which will have to be replaced by European ones. A working group could be established for this work and this group could also further develop the handbook. During the General Assembly members will be asked to volunteer for this working group.
Decision: the translation of the handbook will be paid from the EUROLAB budget. Members will not have to pay to use this handbook.
During the General Assembly members will be asked if they have documents of similar importance/ usefulness, which could be translated and distributed among all members. (EUROLAB would pay for the translation).
Jeff Llewellyn will present and promote the document during the General Assembly.
The document will also be distributed electronically.
It was also decided that in the future there should be at the end of the draft minutes an action list so that each Board member will know his tasks.
9. EUROLAB News-briefing
All EUROLAB national members will be asked to contribute to the newsletter in the future, e.g. in the form of sending in a list of their upcoming events. The Board Members themselves agreed to contribute regularly to the newsletter by sending in at least five news items per issue.
The suggestion was made that certain issues that were discussed during Board meetings could also be published in the newsletter in order to inform the members.
The reports that EUROLAB members have to write when representing EUROLAB on events or in international organisations could also be published in the news briefing.
Therefore there are three possible sources of information for the newsletter:
1. Reports from representatives
2. Generally available information of websites
3. Information provided by the members
It was also agreed that technical problems, e.g. measurements problems, should be discussed in the newsletter.
Decision: Board approves the newsletter, which means that it can be send out after the meeting. (note: done)
It was also discussed that in the future the approved Board minutes should be published in the National Members Area of the EUROLAB website. In order to do so the personal username and the password for the website will have to be changed to more official usernames and passwords, which can then be distributed among the national members. The secretariat of the national organisation will have all the access codes and then it is for them to decide who they will give the details to.
Decision: the password for national members will be the national EUROLAB and the username will be the email address of the national organisation.
Decision: the approved minutes will be put in a folder in the National Members’ Area that all members with access codes will be able to access. The remaining Board documents as well as the draft minutes will be put into the folder that only Board members can access.
Some documents of the old EUROLAB website have not been published on the new website yet but that will be taken care of.
10. EUROLAB/CEOC position paper
The joint EUROLAB/ CEOC position paper currently lacks hard facts and evidence. It can only be used in the future if this issue is solved.
The suggestion was made to contact the AdCo committees established for each European directive or the national market surveillance authorities and advise them to monitor appearance of fake certificates in their territory and ask them for some statistics that might provide hard data to support the message of the joint position paper.
The EUROLAB Secretariat will find out the contact details of these AdCo committees.
Jiri Sobola will send a letter to all presidents of the groups of Notified Bodies and will ask them for their collaboration and for information on the issue of fake certificates (example: fake certificates in the construction sector).
Philippe Dewolfs will work on a proposal on how to challenge these ‘black sheep’ that help issuing these fake certificates.
The option of launching a joint awareness campaign was discussed. The aim of this campaign would be to inform politicians about the role of testing, certification, accreditation etc. and how it works.
This issue will be discussed in JTC PTC and a paper will be prepared.
11. General Assembly 2012 in Prague/ Workshop
Everything for the General Assembly in Prague is arranged; the invitations will be sent out after the meeting. (note: done). The whole event (meetings, dinners, accommodation) will take place in one venue. The host EUROLAB CZ should be able to cover all costs with the exception of accommodation,