On 21 June 2023, the EFESME Board and General Assembly were held in Brussels. The meetings, which took place in a hybrid format to allow for the participation of numerous members and technical experts, were an opportunity to take stock of the various activities carried out by the Federation from the technical, political and national levels with the initiatives of the members themselves, as well as to reason about EFESME's future activities in the months and years to come, in order to ensure continuous support for the European lift SMEs that the Federation represents.
During the Board meeting, members and technical experts were then able to talk about EFESME's presence at the working tables that matter most concerning European and international standardisation in our sector, with a special focus on CEN TC 10 - Passenger, goods and service lifts; to the joint CEN-CLC/JTC 13 'Cybersecurity and data protection' group; to ETSI Smart M2M and its ad-hoc working group for lifts, all at European level; and finally to ISO TC 178 - Lifts, escalators and moving walks at global level. Intensive standardisation work is taking place in all these working groups: where CEN TC 10 and ISO TC 178 are strongly engaged in the revision of EN 81-20 and EN 81-50, which will have crucial international implications, ETSI Smart M2M is addressing the potential and criticalities of the smart monsoon also within the lift industry.
The technical experts also explained to members how EFESME is contributing to the European Commission's expert groups on lifts and machinery, demonstrating the importance of the work the Federation is doing not only in the purely technical field, but also in providing the European Commission and its experts with information and data from SMEs themselves to develop policies and projects within the sector.
In addition, special attention was paid to the activities that EFESME members have developed at national level, with the examples brought by Spain (FEPYMA), with a series of conferences dedicated to the removal of barriers, not only architectural ones, and by Italy (ANACAM), with the National Assembly (moe info on the EFESME participation & the dedicated website - in Italian) organised as a meeting and comparison point for Italian lift SMEs. EFESME is always ready to support initiatives at national level and to participate in them in order to bring the European sphere closer to specific national situations.
The Board of Directors also saw the presence, with an opening presentation, of SBS - Small Business Standards, the association that protects and represents European SMEs within the European standardisation processes.
SBS is also one of EFESME's European partners, and the one with which it develops its various technical activities. SBS's support and collaboration have enabled the Federation to achieve important results for European lift SMEs over many years of joint activities, projects and events.
Finally, during the following General Assembly, EFESME and its members welcomed as an Observer the Swiss company Cobianchi, represented during the Assembly by its CEO, Rudolf Ramseier.
The afternoon saw EFESME's members visit the European Parliament, in order to get a better insight into the functioning of one of the European institutions, and to allow the various national representatives to better understand the Federation's European dimension and role in protecting and supporting small and medium-sized enterprises in the sector.
The EFESME Secretariat remains available for any questions and can be contacted by e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and by phone: +32 2 230 74 14.
