After three successful years the former President Prof. Vjera Krstelj (Croatia), the Vice-President Gerhard Aufricht (Austria) and the Secretary Niksa Krnic (Croatia) reached their end of term in March 2012. The focus during the last three years was clearly put on the improvement of European visibility of the EFNDT. The European-wide partnerships and the signing of memoranda of understanding with EUROLAB, CEOC and EAN have been big steps forward for the visibility of EFNDT today and also in future. We want to take the chance to say “Thank You” because they didn’t stand for reelection at the last EFNDT General assembly.

During the “Berlin EFNDT Week” in March 2012 BoD members and the leading team of President, Vice-President and Secretary has been newly elected. We, Jutta Koehn, Peter Trampus and Matthias Purschke, want to say thank you for your trust and your confidence to go ahead with the strengthening of position of NDT in general and of the EFNDT in particular. Many thanks also to David Gilbert from BINDT for his recent and further support of all kind of EFNDT activities. 

Beyond maintaining and strengthening the EFNDT position achieved, the next years will definitively be characterized by significant changes in training, qualification and certification of NDT personnel, the get together of the national European NDT societies in a still growing Europe and European Community and the successful organization of the upcoming ECNDT 2014 in Prague by our Czech colleagues. 

With the upcoming EN ISO 9712 we will for the first time achieve a worldwide standard for Qualification and Certification of NDT personnel. Herewith we gain a common basis for NDT personnel competence all over the world. The ICNDT will use this chance to set up a worldwide mutual recognition agreement on the basis of what we already had in Europe for more than 20 years. The EFNDT as one of the four regional groups of the ICNDT will support those activities with all its strength. International unity in national diversity is also beneficial for the European industry. 

The national societies in Europe are very different and this means we can and have to learn a lot of things from each other. The regular exchange of information and experience between our societies must be a strong common focus of our activities. Some things are already on the way. EFNDT’s Working Group 1 has already initiated joint workshops between the societies of the former GUS nations and the British Institute (BINDT) and the German Society (DGZfP). This is a first step in the right direction. More of those workshops are highly desirable. More is conceivable and each idea and proposal for further activities is highly welcome. 

Every four years the European NDT community meets at the European Conference for NDT (ECNDT). After Moscow 2010 the next event will take place in Prague in 2014. ECNDT 2014 again offers a brilliant possibility for the national societies to meet, to discuss common issues and to look forward, in the heart of Europe, in Prague. It is only 2 years ahead and right now you should make your schedule for this major European NDT event. 

Matthias Purschke, President, EFNDT
Péter Trampus, Vice-President, EFNDT
Jutta Koehn, General Secretary, EFNDT

The worldwide industry has for some years sent strong messages to the ISO and CEN Technical Committees (TC) requesting that harmonisation between the two standards dealing with certification of NDT personnel be undertaken in order, if possible, to provide industry with a unique standard, resulting in a unique system of NDT personnel certification being applied worldwide.

After consultation, the two TC chairmen have decided to initiate such a harmonisation process. The following proposal has been adopted:

• creation on the ISO and CEN side of relevant groups in order to study the differences between the two standards and make proposals for a unique text.
• “common” meetings of these two groups for this study (two have already been held).

These two meetings have resulted in the drafting of a proposal for a common EN ISO standard, which would be named EN ISO 9712 if the application of the Vienna agreement be approved.