The European Council of Civil Engineers (ECCE) maintains regular contact with the European Institutions and continues its involvement with various European Commission working groups and activities.  ECCE also prepares position papers on issues of concern to professional engineers – these can be found on our web site.  A key contact area for the construction sector is the Construction Unit located within D.G. Enterprise, but ECCE is also in contact with a number of other Directorates General within the European Commission, including Research and Development, Environment, Single Market and Information Technology.  

ECCE is also involved with the European Parliament and raises issues of concern to the elected members.  There are few qualified civil engineers in the Parliament and ECCE welcomed the formation in 2002 of a new forum on construction issues in the European Parliament, following the demise of the previous ‘CRANE’ inter-group.  The new construction forum, named FOCOPE, has been created with the support of UK chartered civil engineer Den Dover MEP  (www.focope.com) who hopes that the forum will provide a resource to brief MEPs on construction-related issues which are raised in the Parliament.

Ongoing details of our contact with the Commission, Parliament and occasional contact with other European Institutions are contained in ECCE News, the newsletter of the European Council of Civil Engineers and also in our internal briefings for ECCE members.