Notes from the President Rel 12.0 - General Assembly 2008

Dear Euralarm Member

It has been a while since my last Notes but I can assure you Euralarm has been working in a number of important projects. Broadly they are

1. Agreeing a Fire and Security position for the European Service Directive
2. Ensuring that we have a robust strategy for the various directives relating to environmental matters that will affect our sector
3. Getting into place a one stop test and certificate process – EQM, that will allow a pan European certification from a single product test that will achieve compliance to European Fire and Security Standards or agreed technical specifications

Euralarm will at its General Assembly in Sofia (June 2-3, 2008) discuss the detailed progress on all of these and other projects, however I would like to inform you about some the key headlines, to give you both an incentive to attend the General Assembly and also to tell you how close we are to delivering our goals, our key messages today are:

1. The issues around social dumping of labour within the Service Directive has been removed and it will not happen, also we now have a very good chance to have sensible codes of practice applied to how work should be carried out in any country. Clearly this will place a training obligation upon us and there will also be a need to develop schemes for the quality of the delivery service.
   Euralarm is struggling with a common position in regards to the Service Directive. In particular whether Security should be considered as private security and thus, unlike Fire, be exempted from the Directive. A task group is working on a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) as basis for a Euralarm position that will be presented at the General Assembly
2. All directives have clear linkages to a whole new range of environmental directives, around manufacturing waste, product disposal and control of hazardous materials. All of these issues will give benefits for the environment and when organised correctly will also give benefits for our businesses.
3. The EQM project has again been a major topic this year. We follow decidedly the target that has been given by the General Assembly in Prague 2005, i.e. to achieve a high quality one stop testing and certification process that is based on an open scheme and European standards and that is supported by the stakeholders of our industry. Note that although Euralarm is now leading this project it is clear that Euralarm will not run the business once it is launched but pass it on to officers elected by stakeholders. The scheme is set up that an independent test and certification process is assured in line with the European standards. Just a note: the European Co-operation Association (EA) has approved the scheme, and it will be operated as a Sector scheme under the EA umbrella.
   
   We expect the business to be operational by 3rd Quarter 2008. Its name, logo and web site will then be in place, and an increasing group of test houses and certifiers that have fulfilled the acceptance criteria will be providing this one stop process. As part of the business model we will be offering migration to EQM certification for products already tested to EN standards that are valid for our quality mark. With support from industry for this we will get off to a fast start.

The General Assembly (GA) will be an exciting opportunity to hear more on these topics, a GA news letter will expand more on the main points, but your attendance is the only real way to hear about our progress – I look forward to seeing you in Sofia in June.

With best regards

Gustav Pfister

President