Fit!vak, the Dutch fitness association, became a member of EHFA in September 2008. It joined the association's national association category, taking a seat at the general assembly and the right to take part in the working groups that carried the association's programme.
The release was dated 29 September 2008. It came two months after Germany's VDF renewed its own membership agreement, and it joined a run of national bodies putting their relationship with the association on a formal footing during 2008.
The Netherlands was one of the markets where the case for a common qualifications framework was easiest to make. It had a comparatively consolidated fitness sector and a national association used to working with government on vocational training, which meant its members already understood the argument that qualifications should mean something outside the club that issued them.
National association membership was not a badge. Members voted at the general assembly, could stand for the board, and were consulted on the standards as they were drafted. See membership for the categories and the statutes for the rules that governed them.
The category existed because a European framework needed carriers in each country. The national association was the body that could put a standard in front of training providers, employers and government in its own market: without them the association could publish standards, with them the standards had somewhere to land. See the first meeting of national associations, held in Brussels that October.