ECIA President’s message:

Dear colleagues,

At the moment one major theme impacts our lives: the Corona virus, and its effect on our society and on our jobs.

The ECIA board held its last meeting in Paris in January and we had to consider the strikes in France which had some effect on our meeting. Our next board meeting, planned for the end of March, was supposed to be held in Brussels with the main focus to discuss an EU funding. Like many other organizations we had to switch to a video conference and cancel our invited guests from the EU. The new situation changes every day. Anyhow the work of the board members, there flexibility, motivation and support make me really happy.

I hope that we all manage the weeks of Corona in good health. Even if the virus curse has been around for a while, most of us are now beginning to realize what it means. I would never have dreamed that there could be a corona suspension-law, but there is. For many people it’s about health, for others it’s about economic survival and for others it’s about the big changes in everyday life.

I personally believe it is very important to assess the situation realistically and to develop good plans for the future and to look forward positively, because this new situation, which we all experience, has to make us think about our reality. We are learning from an external cause what is really important. The way forward is cruel and hard, but we should try to learn from it. I have received some very nice messages from some of you and would like to take this opportunity to thank you for these.

There is much uncertainty for all of us. The best advice I can give you is to try to stay cool, maybe come up with some good ideas for the future and to keep solidarity and support each other because we are all in the same situation.

The preparations for the ECIA General assembly in Helsinki in September 2020 are on track. We are aware that things might change and that you probably have other, more important concerns at the moment but the GA is something to look forward to. Among other things we want to take opportunity to exchange experiences from the acute situation and hear how you have handled this. We think this could be an interesting discussion!

In this issue of the ECIA newsletter you will find articles from a time when the world was still in order, so please enjoy the reading.

Once again try to keep cool and with this in mind I wish you all the best!

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