The 52nd General Assembly of Eurovent, the European association of manufacturers of air-conditioning, refrigeration and ventilation equipment, was held in Bruges (Belgium) on 28 May, with the participation of representatives of the national associations that are full members.

General Assembly Meeting

As a result of the application of the Business Plan, approved in 2008, this was the first assembly in which the structure designed in the plan, which included the incorporation of an Executive Director, was operational.

At the beginning of the meeting, the President, Lambert Bouwmeester, thanked the Belgian association, Agoria, for the organization of the event and the congress participants for their participation. He said that, for professional reasons, he had to leave the presidency of Eurovent and confirmed that Carlo Grossi had agreed to bring forward his replacement to the scheduled dates. Consequently, the Board of Directors is composed as follows:

• Chairman: Carlo Grossi
• Vice President in charge of Certification: Christian Herten
• Vice President in charge of Finance: Georg Mager
• Vice President in charge of Marketing: Didier Da Costa
• Vice President in charge of External Relations: Alex Rasmussen
• Vice President in charge of the Technical Commission: Javier Fernández de Bordons
• Vice-President in charge of the Committee on the Environment: Frank van Keulen

The session proceeded normally, including the mandatory reports by Secretary Felix Van Eyken and Executive Director Joop Hoogkamer. Subsequently, the accounts for the financial year, the national associations' fees and the budget for 2011 were approved, the latter taking into account the activities described in the previously approved Action Plan.

Finally, the proposals to modify the statutes and regulations were discussed and approved with the idea of facilitating the governance of the association. Among them, the disappearance of the Executive Committee, which will be replaced with the convening of an additional general assembly or the creation of a single Commission, which will coordinate the work of the Product Groups and prepare the documents that express the position of Eurovent towards the outside world and towards the institutions.

The Vice-Chairmen responsible for the former committees will be incorporated into the work of this single, new committee.

The assembly ended with a speech by Commissioner Guido de Wilt of the European Commission's Directorate-General for Energy, whose paper entitled "Ecodesign legislation and EU policies" was very interesting.

He began his speech with an overview of the different initiatives related to the Union's energy policy.

As instruments of that policy, he mentioned, among others, the Directives on: Eco-design, Labelling, Energy Efficiency of Buildings and Energy Services and Energy End-Use Efficiency, not forgetting the Energy Star Programme or the Eco-Labelling Regulation.

He then reported that an Energy Action Plan was being prepared, to be integrated with another, also under preparation, called the Energy Efficiency Action Plan. He also confirmed that the necessary structural funds would be made available to carry out these and other initiatives, including special projects.

He then focused his intervention on the analysis of the Ecodesign Directive, the procedures, methodology and steps for establishing the requirements applicable to the different products included in the corresponding LOTs, presenting an analysis of the expected impact of the implementation of this Directive in terms of energy savings.

Taking product efficiency as an example, he stressed the importance of an approach to the energy problem from the demand side, labelling and from the supply side, ecodesign, end-of-life treatment, etc.

He finished his speech with a tour of the different phases and dates foreseen for the development of various Directives, with special dedication to the many times mentioned about Ecodesign.

In representation of AFEC, Association of manufacturers of teams of air conditioning, Javier Fernández of Bordons, President, and José Mª Ortiz, General Director, participated respectively of active form in the meetings of the board of directors and General Assembly.

Other activities

As it is already a tradition, the celebration of the General Assembly, generates an adequate framework to review the activities that have been developed during the interval, one year, between one edition and the previous one. On this occasion, the previous day, the Commission meeting took place, preceded, on the 26th, by the holding of a working meeting on market statistics at a European level.

As it is already a tradition, the celebration of the General Assembly, generates a suitable framework to review the activities that have been developed during the interval, one year, between one edition and the previous one. On this occasion, the previous day, the Commission meeting took place, preceded, on the 26th, by the holding of a working meeting on market statistics at a European level.

The Commission

The day 27 took place the meeting of the Commission in which, with the assistance of the national delegates that participate regularly in their meetings, in the case of AFEC, José Mª Ortiz, the Executive Director of Eurovent, Joop Hoogkamer, reviewed the works carried out by the Commission since its recent constitution, the past month of March, doing a traveled through by the different LOTs of the Directive on Eco-design, with an updating of the situation of the development of each one of them. Specifically those corresponding to:

• DG-TREN Lot 10: Household air conditioning and comfort fans
• DG-ENTR Lot 1: Refrigeration and freezing equipment
• DG TREN Lot 1: Boilers
• DG-TREN Lot 11: Fans for ventilation in non residential buildings
• DG-TREN Lot 12: Display Cabinets

Prior to this, Mr. Riviere from the Paris School of Mines, the body leading the consortium created to develop the design requirements for LOT 6, Air Conditioning and Ventilation Equipment, which has recently been launched, had spoken.

In his presentation, which gave rise to numerous consultations by the members of the Commission, he made special reference to:

• The scope of LOT 6 and the interaction with the equipment covered by other LOTs.
• The timetable foreseen for the development of the different actions, and milestones of the same.
• The efficiency objectives.
• The estimation of the expected energy savings.

To the meetings of the Commission they attend with regularity, on the part of AFEC, Cecilia Salamanca and José Mª Ortiz.

Market Intelligence

Another meeting that took place in Bruges, in this case on May 26, was dedicated to the analysis of the possibility of creating reliable and representative statistics, at European level, of the market for air conditioning and refrigeration equipment.

In this sense, the first steps have been taken by Eurovent Certification Company, through the initiative called Market Intelligence, whose first steps, results and objectives were explained at the meeting.

During the meeting, the different documents used by the different national associations that carry out market studies were analyzed with a view to possible collaboration.

The present associations in the meeting, AFEC among them, explained the difficulties that that collaboration presents, given that in many cases the information that is generated in the national studies is not of its property, but of the participating businesses, to which is added the confidentiality of the collection of data and the different formats and procedures used by each country.

Nevertheless, it was possible to confirm a decided willingness to collaborate, and it was agreed to continue to hold meetings aimed at seeking some kind of agreement.