Partners about EHFA

EHFA kept a page of statements from the organisations it worked with, so that the case for the association was made by the sector rather than by the secretariat. The organisations that spoke on it were the ones with most at stake in the answer: international operator groups, equipment manufacturers, a supplier of group exercise programmes, and national associations in Portugal and the United Kingdom.

What they had in common was a reason to care about qualifications that crossed borders. An operator with clubs in several countries cannot move staff between them, or promise an applicant the same training wherever they work, unless a qualification means the same thing in each market. A manufacturer sells to clubs whose staff were trained under different national systems. A national association had to make a European framework work inside its own country's training and registration arrangements.

The statements came from Fitness First, an operator group with clubs in many countries; Life Fitness, an equipment manufacturer; Les Mills, whose group exercise programmes were licensed into clubs internationally; HealthCity and SATS, two European operator groups; and the national associations AGAP in Portugal and the FIA in the United Kingdom.

These were not outside observers commenting on someone else's trade. They were the employers who would hire the holder of a qualification, the manufacturers whose equipment an instructor works with, and the associations through which most of the sector's instructors belonged to something. The association's standards had value only if organisations of that kind used them - when recruiting, when training staff, when deciding what a certificate was worth. Their public support was evidence that the framework was usable, not merely correct.

Two themes ran through the statements the page collected, and both were practical rather than sentimental. The first was staff capability across borders: groups operating in several countries wanted to train and move people without re-qualifying them market by market, and a register entry gave them something to check. The second was representation: the rules and programmes that shape how clubs operate are settled at European level, and a single company or a single national body has little purchase on them alone.

The national associations had a third interest. Their own members were the clubs, and their standing with government and training authorities at home depended on being able to say what a qualified exercise professional was in terms those authorities recognised. A European standard that could be cited in a national argument was worth having; a European standard nobody had heard of was not.

Partner categories carried a commitment of support, and the organisations that took them were listed publicly at the level they had joined - see industry partners for the roster and the tiers. Beyond the money, partners took part in the association's meetings and, through the working groups, in the standards work itself. National associations joined as members, with votes at the general assembly and the right to stand for the board, which is described under national associations.

The association's own account of what it owed both groups, and why, is on the partners page.