Executive Committee meeting of ESPRM has been held in Riga at 4th Sept., 2008, under the overwhelming hospitality of our Latvian hosts Anita and Aivars Vetra.

Institutional points were first to be addressed and the minutes of the meeting of Executive Committee in Bruges in June, 2008 were approved. Secretary Elena Ilieva presented a letter from Georgian PRM society wishing to join ESPRM. In an answering letter the ways to become an official member according to the ESPRM statute were explained to them. We are waiting for their further response.

Many organisational aspects of ESPRM were addressed during the Namur meeting: updating the lists of delegates, presidents of national societies, the list of individual members and contacts with all of them. President Alessandro Giustini raised the question of many PRM societies without a representative, and a possibility to cooperate with other societies without full memberships, and also presented the Questionnaire and the letter proposing cooperation - membership of national societies to ESPRM. Treasurer Christoph Gutenbrunner presented that 26 countries have paid their fee for 2007.  Changes in the ESPRM Statutes were discussed, and it was proposed to include the word “education” in the Mission. It was agreed to find a solution to prove that the individual member is a PRM doctor, and to explain it to individual members at Bruges individual members’ assembly.

The meeting was organized besides the international Stroke conference and was open to invited experts: Gordana Devecerski, Katharina Sunnerhagen, Mauro Zampolini, Stefano Negrini, Eugenia Battaglio (Minerva Medica) and Tommaso Sciarra, to support the work of Executive Committee on the organizing of working groups for website, newsletter and guidelines, cooperation to national societies, to promote link to “Europa Medicophysica”, soon to become “European Journal of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine”, and in many other organizational issues.

The national delegates of 19 active countries took part in the ESPRM meeting of the Board of Governors in September, 2007. Following acceptance of the previous Rennes minutes and treasurer report, Prof. Giustini as the new president to ESPRM started his speech aiming to the election of a new Executive Committee of 8 members, including past president and himself, who should have single role, i.e. not on several other organisational boards.