EURAMET e.V. (formerly EUROMET) is an association for cooperation of national metrology institutes of European Member States in the area of fundamental metrology and in the framework of the arrangement CIPM MRA plays a role of so called regional metrology organization for Europe. The organization was founded in 1983 and currently it has 38 members inclusive the European Commission represented by one of the research centres JRC IRMM. CMI is a member since 1996. Joint projects in areas like research, interlaboratory comparisons, mutual consultations and agreements on operation of metrological traceability (for another country) are core activities of this cooperation. The management of those projects follows the approved rules. These projects are managed by coordinators reporting to chairs of Technical Committees (TCs) in the individual fields of measurement (10 technical areas + interdisciplinary matters + quality management systems for the purposes of CIPM MRA). Members of those TCs are called contact persons appointed by the member institutes for each individual field of measurement – they would regularly attend meetings convened by the chairs. The overview of the CMI/CR contact persons can be found here.
The top management board of the organization (with an active presence of CMI General Director) has since many years strived to get an access to a special subsidy (programme) singled out from the EU Framework programmes of Research and Development that would enable to launch coordinated R/D projects in metrology operated by EUROMET and aimed at tackling the existing challenges in metrology. This would enable to overcome certain fragmentation of NMIs in Europe (in comparison e.g. with the USA where all such activities are concentrated at NIST). After some preparatory stages EURAMET has succeeded to achieve this goal during the preparations of the 7th Framework Programme on the basis of the then Art. 169 of the European Treaty (now Art. 185) which has given right to the European Commission (CEC) to co-finance joint research projects initiated by Member States.
A necessary condition to achieve that was a transformation of the organization to a legal body to be able to deal with associated funding. Therefore, the validity of the founding document of the old organization EUROMET, Memorandum of Understanding of September 23rd, 1987 in the amended version of July 25th, 2002, was terminated as of June 30th, 2007. Since July 1st , 2007 a new body (a legal person) – a registered non-profit organization according to the German law (eingetragener Verein) titled EURAMET e.V. has taken over all the existing activities – see www.euramet.org. The Secretariat of the new institution is located in Braunschweig, Germany where the organization is also registered. As a legal body, the organization can legally carry out all the necessary activities and exploit corresponding rights inclusive an international composition.
The above mentioned special sub-programme in the 7th EU Framework Programme is known under the acronym EMRP (standing for “European Metrology Research Programme”). Its total budget amounts to ca 400 mil. EUR (formed by a co-financing from Member States through the NMIs and from the CEC in ratio 50:50), 23 Member States have taken part in the period of 2007 – 2013 23 inclusive CMI/CR. For the subsequent EU framework programme called Horizon 2020 the specification of the metrology programme has been aligned with the EU priorities - now it is called EMPIR (European Metrology Programme of Innovation and Research) and it was approved in spring 2014 by a co-decision of the European Council and the European Parliament. For more detailed information see www.emrponline.eu.