EHFA and IHRSA, the international fitness industry association, signed an agreement to cooperate in July 2009, and the two organisations issued a joint press release on 7 July 2009.
The association's own record of the signing dates the agreement itself to 29 June 2009 and names EHFA's president, Harm B. Tegelaars, and IHRSA's president, Joe Moore, as its signatories. The agreement connected the European qualifications work to the wider international sector. Operators, suppliers and training providers had worked across borders long before qualifications did, and a European register that described only part of the market would have been of limited use to an employer recruiting internationally.
Working with an international body was also a way of checking that the European framework could sit alongside standards used elsewhere rather than compete with them, and it was consistent with the way the association worked: a standards framework is only as strong as the number of organisations that recognise it. EHFA followed the announcement with an article in the World Sports Law Report in August 2009, published under the title "EHFA and IHRSA: promoting health through fitness", and IHRSA appears in the association's list of partner organisations. See association partners and EHFA in the press.