Press Releases

EHFA reported its decisions to the trade and national media through its press releases. Those in the archive cover membership agreements with national associations, appointments to the Standards Council and the Scientific Advisory Board, cooperation agreements with bodies outside Europe, the register's alliances in Catalonia and Ireland, EU funding awards, and the association's plans for growth as its members approved them.

They run from the renewal of the German association VDF's membership in July 2008 to the second industry summit in Brussels in November 2011, and they are the closest thing in the archive to a running account of the association's agreements as they were signed.

• 21 November 2011 — The European health & fitness sector outlines its main priorities
• 10 November 2011 — Virgin Active joins EHFA as Vanguard partner
• 26 September 2011 — EHFA recognises new national register in Ireland which joins the EREPS programme
• 23 September 2011 — EHFA signs memorandum of cooperation with Catalunya government to join EREPS programme
• 26 July 2011 — EHFA partners an important EU funded project called MOVE
• 23 June 2011 — EHFA 4th Executive Leadership Forum discusses new technologies
• 22 June 2011 — The Catalan Sports Professionals Register enters strategic alliance with EREPS
• 19 April 2011 — EHFA members endorse strong plans for growth
• 18 April 2011 — EHFA and Human Kinetics sign partnership agreement
• 18 November 2010 — EHFA awarded EU funding for Fitness Against Doping project
• 21 May 2010 — EHFA 3rd European Fitness Forum breaks new records
• 30 April 2010 — EHFA members approve strong plans for growth
• 5 March 2010 — EHFA representation reaches beyond 9000 health and fitness facilities in 23 European countries
• 7 July 2009 — EHFA and IHRSA sign agreement to cooperate
• 1 July 2009 — First EHFA Executive Leadership Forum
• 26 May 2009 — Towards higher standards and quality in health and fitness
• 13 May 2009 — Prof Dr Alfonso Jiménez chair of EHFA Standards Council
• 12 May 2009 — EHFA members approve strong plans for growth and appoint new board members
• 25 February 2009 — EHFA brings top EU officials to the table
• 23 January 2009 — Prof Van Mechelen chair of EHFA Scientific Advisory Board
• 29 September 2008 — Dutch fitness association Fit!vak becomes EHFA member
• 9 July 2008 — German fitness association VDF renews membership agreement with EHFA

Two threads run through them. The first is the widening of the association's membership and reach: national associations joining from Germany and the Netherlands, representation passing 9,000 facilities in 23 countries, and agreements with Human Kinetics and Virgin Active that brought a publisher and a major operator into the same body as the national federations.

The second is the register. The Catalan sports professionals register, a new national register in Ireland and a memorandum with the Government of Catalunya all joined or aligned with the EREPS programme within a few months of each other in 2011. The pattern they describe - national registers linking to a European one rather than being replaced by it - is the shape the association had argued for since it built the register. See EREPS and, for the criteria a register had to meet, accreditation.

Where the releases were taken up beyond the sector's own channels is recorded on the EHFA in the press page, and the positions they set out sit behind the association's European affairs work.