EHFA's May 2009 release set out the case the association had been making since its reconstitution: that the health and fitness sector needed common occupational standards, and that raising quality meant agreeing what a competent exercise professional knows and can do.
The release was dated 26 May 2009 and its full text was issued as an attachment. It came days after the association announced the chair of its Standards Council, and weeks after members approved the year's plans at the general assembly in Essen.
The argument ran against a real objection. Fitness had grown as a commercial industry, and commercial industries are sceptical of standards imposed from outside. The association's answer was that the standards were not being imposed on the sector but written with it, and that the alternative - dozens of national training traditions, no shared vocabulary, and certificates that meant nothing to anyone outside the organisation that issued them - was already costing the sector customers and credibility.
The standards themselves were written against the European Qualifications Framework - levels 3 and 4, where fitness instructors and personal trainers were placed - so that a national education system could reference them without importing a foreign curriculum. The European framework did not replace national qualifications; it linked them by describing what they had in common, which is what made a qualification portable from one country to the next.
The standards described in that release became the framework set out under Standards, developed with EU funding and maintained by the Standards Council. The history of the standards covers how they were built, and the framework was extended in 2011, when the general assembly adopted level 2 standards: EQF level 2 standards adopted by the General Assembly.