From the President’s desk

Dear Members of UILI:

Last November I had the honor to be reelected by UILI´s general Assembly for the presidency of UILI for the 2014-2015 term, and we have presented a strategic plan and some of the aims included are:

• To develop liaisons with other laboratory and conformity assessment associations in either the private and public sectors that may provide synergies to reach UILI’s goals
• To improve UILI’s participation in international organizations such as EA, ILAC, IAF, ISO… to represent laboratories world-wide by formulating and voicing their opinion regarding economical and technical issues of direct impact on their activity.
• To spread UILI’s presence worldwide, increasing number of members associated, welcoming all kind of laboratories: Independent, Public and those from Big Industry Corporations
• To improve UILI´s worth for all laboratory members

UILI is developing a considerable effort to increase the number of country Associations and non-affiliated laboratories members associated specially from outside Europe. In this regard it should be taking into account that ILAC is promoting the development of regional organizations of accreditation bodies in different parts of the world as for example in South America or in the Arabic countries, in order to coordinate the work of different accreditation bodies. In accordance to this policy EUROLAB has proposed to UILI to work together in promoting the creation of regional organizations of labs worldwide so that these regional organizations could also re-enforce the paper of UILI. This proposal is very welcome in UILI.

The promotion of Regional Organizations of Laboratories is not an easy task, because other regions of the world, are not as well organized as we are here in Europe. There are not regional organizations nor even Country Associations for instance in South America, Africa or Asia. So first it is necessary to develop strategies to approach the individual laboratories and show them the advantages of be members of UILI in defense of their professional and commercial interests.