Zapisnik izviršnega odbora Evropske travniške zveze (La Rochelle, Francija, 29.5. 2002)
Please find below the minutes of the Business Meeting held in La Rochelle, to be used for distribution among the colleagues in your countries.
Minutes of the Business Meeting held in La Rochelle, France on 29 May 2002 during the 19th General Meeting, before the conference dinner. The President, Ch. Huyghe, was in the chair.
1. Opening and Minutes of the Business Meeting held in Aalborg, Denmark, 25 May 2000.
The President opened the meeting at 17.15 with a welcome to all participants. The minutes of the previous Business Meeting had been on the notice-board for everyone to read. There were no comments.
2. Report from the Executive Committee which met in Witzenhausen, Germany on 11 July 2001 and in La Rochelle, France on 28 May 2002.
a) Symposium on 'Organic grassland farming' in Germany, 2001
The President reported that we had a successful symposium which was attended by some 200 people. The Proceedings appeared as volume 6 in the EGF series 'Grassland Science in Europe'. The conclusions of the conference appeared on the web site of the symposium.
b) Symposium on 'Optimal forage systems for animal production and the environment' in Bulgaria, 2003. Kirilov, the symposium chairman, gave a short overview of the expected programme. He invited everybody to attend the Symposium in Pleven, Bulgaria, 26-28 May 2003, and to send abstracts before 15th August.
c) Invitation for Symposium in 2005 One of the Baltic countries has expressed the willingness to organise the EGF Symposium in 2005. This was supported by the Executive Committee.
e) Invitation for the 21st General Meeting in 2006
An official invitation for 2006 was received from Spain. According to the Constitution, the final venue of a General Meeting should be made at a Business Meeting of a previous General Meeting. However, the Executive Committee already supported the invitation from Spain.
f) Executive Committee Working Party on Future functioning of EGF.
The Executive Committee decided to form a small committee to formulate short term and long term actions after the points raised by Wilkins at the previous General Meeting in Denmark
g) Establishment of EGF Working Group on 'Grassland re-sowing and grass-arable rotations' A group of scientists from different European countries has requested the EGF to act as a working group under the umbrella of EGF. The Executive Committee supported this initiative. The Working Group will report every General Meeting
h) EGF Fund
The Fund helps to cover administrative costs and occasional expenses by the Federation Secretary. The Fund is in a healthy state, with money coming in from meetings (per paying participant 10 SFr which is about 6 Euro) and from the sale of Proceedings, through the good services of the British Grassland Society. The Federation Secretary thanked the organising countries for supplying the proceedings free of charge and the Swiss Grassland Society for keeping the account of the EGF Fund.
i) Honorary Life Presidents
For the record in these minutes, although this point was not raised during the Business Meeting but at the Extraordinary Meeting during the Conference Dinner of 29 May 2002: L.'tMannetje (Netherlands) and R.J. Wilkins (UK) were elected as Honorary Life Presidents.
3. Arrangements for the 20th General Meeting, in 2004.
Steffen presented an introduction to the meeting, to be held 21-24 June 2004 in Luzern, Switzerland. The proposed theme of the meeting is 'Land use systems in grassland dominated regions'. He told that the papers of the meeting will be published as usual as a book but presentations and results of the conference would be available later as CD-ROM. Steffen drew attention to the web site and invited everybody to attend the next General Meeting in Switzerland. Upon the suggestion of the Executive Committee the Business Meeting accepted with applause the invitation from Switzerland to host the 20th General Meeting.
4. Elections to the Executive Committee
a) President
The Federation Secretary was in the Chair during this item. He proposed Steffen as new President for the period 2002-2004, which was met by approval from the audience. Past President Huyghe then continued to chair the Business Meeting.
b) Regional representatives
The following countries were elected in the Executive Committee to represent their region:
Central Europe - Germany
Western Europe -Ireland
Southern Europe - Greece
Huyghe asked the national grassland societies from these countries to provide the name of their
representative to the Federation Secretary as soon as possible. He spoke words of thanks to Kessler (Switzerland), Lemaire, (France) and Parente (Italy) who represented these regions during 1998-2002.
c) Federation Secretary
Prins was re-elected for a term of two years. The Executive Committee nominated Kessler (Switzerland) as his successor in 2004.
5. Any other business
a) Jewiss (UK), editor of Grass and Forage Science, reported that this official journal of EGF
became more international in the last two years. He called for papers and told that he would be succeeded by Milne (UK) at the end of the year.
b) Wilkins (UK) spoke as chairman of the Scientific Committee of the International Grassland Congress to be held in 2005 in Ireland and UK.
The main meeting would be in Dublin, to be followed by 5 satellite meetings, the one in Cork on 'Utilisation of grazed grass in temperate animal systems' in co-operation with EGF.
c) 't Mannetje (Netherlands) congratulated the Organising Committee with the success of the conference. However, there was a serious criticism: On two occasions plenary papers were not presented because the author did not turn up. It would have been better to have alwaystwo authors per paper. In any case the gaps in the schedule should not have been closed by just continuing with the other papers. Participants should have been warned beforehand.
d) Papanastasis (Greece) suggested to number the EGF symposia just like the General Meetings.are numbered This would be looked into at the next meeting of the Executive Committee.
6. Closing
Huyghe closed the Business Meeting at 19.00. At the closing ceremony on the final day of the conference the EGF flag was lowered and passed on from France to Switzerland. Steffen warmly invited all participants to Switzerland in 2004 and thanked the Organising Committee of the 19th General Meeting for the job well done.
Zapisal: Prins Willem, sekretar zveze