EHFA announced in May 2009 that Prof Dr Alfonso Jiménez would chair its Standards Council. The council held technical authority over the association's qualifications framework: the content of the standards, the accreditation criteria, and the decisions about which programmes met them.
The press release was dated 13 May 2009, three weeks after the general assembly in Essen at which the association's members approved the year's plans.
The council's separation from the board was deliberate. A qualifications framework written by a board of operators would be shaped by what was commercially convenient; one written by educators alone would describe what was easy to teach. The council drew on both, and reported to the board without being directed by it on technical questions - which is why the framework continued to mean the same thing as boards and national memberships changed.
The council's work at that point was concrete: the association was revising its standards for fitness instructors and personal trainers against levels 3 and 4 of the European Qualifications Framework, and the council held technical authority over the result.
The council was supported by the Technical Experts Group, which worked on the standards in detail, and advised by the Scientific Advisory Board. See Standards Council for how it worked.