EHFA's members approved the association's plans for growth at the general assembly held in Essen on 23 April 2010. The association reported the decisions in a press release on 30 April 2010.
The plans sat alongside two other decisions from the same meeting: the revised European Qualifications Framework level 3 and 4 standards for fitness instructors and personal trainers were adopted there, and the association agreed the strategy that ran through to 2016. The three belonged together. Standards that had been revised could be referenced by national education systems, which made mobility easier for individual professionals and made the European framework usable in markets that already had qualification structures of their own.
The membership itself was growing at the time, with new national associations forming in markets that had not previously had a body to speak for the sector. Much of the year's growth was to come through those standards: a framework that national bodies could point to gave them something concrete to put to their own training providers and education ministries. Approving the plans also meant approving what they cost. The association put the strategy to members with its funding attached, on the argument that an association owned by its members should be paid for by many of them, and should return more to each of them than it cost. See Vision 2016 and membership.