News

ECU General Council meets in Berlin

17 Nov 2011

The next two days sees the Fall meeting of the ECU General Council. Hosted in the beautiful city of Berlin, the event brings together the 20 nations of the European Chiropractors Union and provides an opportunity for chiropractic leaders to meet and discuss issues relating to politics, education and research in Europe.

One of the key themes of the Berlin meeting will be leadership in European chiropractic. The ECU recognises that while some nations have achieved much in terms of legislation, regulation and recognition for chiropractors, smaller nations struggle to develop through lack of numbers, external opposition and the political landscape. As a chiropractic family, the ECU aims to help correct these imbalances by providing support, both practical and financial, wherever it can. The ECU leadership workshop will be the first of its kind and will initially focus on strategic decision-making and membership communication.

Much work has been done this year to develop the ECU website (www.ecunion.eu). The website exists as a resource for ECU chiropractors as well as a shop window for anyone wishing to find out more about the ECU. The new site will feature a ‘Find a chiropractor’ function as well as the latest news in European chiropractic. We will be discussing a draft version of the site in Berlin and will be formally launching the new site very soon.

One of the goals of the ECU is to promote chiropractic education in its member countries To this end, the Executive Council has met with representatives from Bilgi University in Istanbul and in Berlin we will be meeting with senior figures from the University of Dresden. Only by expanding the provision of chiropractic education will the profession evolve in Europe and the ECU is committed to supporting the development of new programmes, particularly in publicly funded universities.

We’re delighted to welcome Zsolt Kalabori, President of the Hungarian Chiropractors Association, to the Berlin meeting. Hungary has applied to become the newest member of the ECU and subject to ratification will join us at the table with full membership rights and privileges. At the same time, Portugal has sadly decided to terminate its membership, leaving the ECU at 20 member nations.

The ECU is busy preparing for next year’s convention, which will be held in Amsterdam from 17 to 20 May 2012. To help make it a huge success, we’ve been working on a sponsorship strategy and already have an agreement with Activator Instruments who will be the main Convention Sponsors for the event. Our thanks go to them for their generous support of the ECU.