EUROGEOSURVEYS EUROGEOSURVEYS, the Association of the Geological Surveys of the European Union EuroGeoSurveys Bureau rue Breydel 40 B-1040 Brussels Telephone; +32 2 282 0604 Fax: +32 2 280 1979 Web site: http://www.eurogeosurveys.org EuroGeoSurveys was legally registered as a non-profit association in France in January 1996 and its Members are the national Geological Surveys of all fifteen countries of the European Communities, represented at the level of their Directors, plus Norway as an Associated Member. The Members of EuroGeoSurveys are governmental organisations currently totalling over 7000 Geological Survey professionals active both onshore and offshore at national and international levels in basic, applied and mapping programmes in the geosciences: geology, geochemistry, mineralogy, geophysics, hydrogeology and related disciplines. EuroGeoSurveys is an enabling organisation and its mission is: to bring together the Geological Surveys, enabling them to jointly address European issues of common interest; to provide a permanent network between the Geological Surveys and a common, but not unique, gateway to each of the Geological Surveys and their national networks; to assist the European Union to obtain joint technical advice from the Geological Surveys of the member states; to promote, wherever appropriate, the contribution of geoscience to European Union affairs and action programmes; to initiate, develop, and promote geoscience inputs to coordinated bilateral and multilateral programmes with European and other countries. EuroGeoSurveys business is managed by an annually rotating Executive Committee of three of the national Directors. One Director takes the office of President for a year and chairs the Executive Committee and the General Meeting of all sixteen individual Geological Survey Directors which governs EuroGeoSurveys and directs its forward policy. The association mandates a full-time Secretary General as its legal representative at European level through a Bureau based in Brussels. Dr Richard Annells is the current Secretary General until December 2000. Each Geological Survey is a public institution which reports continuously to its national government on the state of the country’s landmass, sea floor and earth resources, and is a prime national authority or topic centre for detailed resource and environmental information and policy-related questions. The Geological Surveys maintain large geoscience information banks, which have been built from information gathered continuously over an average period of 120 years and they have strong links with government and industry. Geological Survey information provides the baseline for decision-making by Member State government and industry action programmes in natural resources and the environment. During the last decade, the work of the Geological Surveys has included an increasing proportion of into work related to the monitoring and preservation of the environment in addition to the search for raw materials. Geological Survey work is thus of critical relevance to European Union problem solving in earth resource and environmental matters both onshore and offshore and can help to enhance the long term competitiveness of industry and quality of life in Europe. Members of EuroGeoSurveys have participated in the Fourth and previous Framework Programmes in the areas of: Industrial and Materials Technology; Standards, Measurements and Testing; Environment and Climate; MAST; JOULE; and Radiation Protection as well as in DG I and DG VIII International Cooperation programmes. EuroGeoSurveys interacts with various Directorates-General of the European Commission, as well as the European Parliament and the European Environment Agency and is actively participating in programmes or policy formulation in industry, development cooperation, environment, regional policies and energy to discuss Geological Survey inputs to long-term policy formulation in a variety of natural resource-based or environmental scenarios in the Member States, Central and Eastern Europe, the Former Soviet Union and the Developing World. EuroGeoSurveys has contributed written opinions on the content of the 5th Framework Programme and on other own-initiative topics to the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Environment Agency. In April 1997 a EuroGeoSurveys consortium of all fifteen European Union Geological Surveys started construction of a pan-European system for the electronic exchange of geological information (the GEIXS project) as a two-year concerted action in the FP IV ESPRIT programme managed by DG III. EuroGeoSurveys strategy is formulated and implemented in ten different topic areas by networks of senior Survey experts that report through the Secretary General to the General Meeting of Directors on topics that include: Geoscience information exchange and geospatial information systems Earth observation (remote sensing) Mineral resources International cooperation Marine geosciences Groundwater resources Urban substructure Energy resources Palaeoclimate Thematic geoscience maps Membership of EuroGeoSurveys is only open to subscribing national Geological Surveys of the European Union and Associated States. However it seeks to integrate public and private sector participants into active project groups to achieve the most effective combination of expertise for the work in hand.