About EUFASA

EUFASA - the European Union Foreign Affairs Spouses Association is a non-profit making association whose members are the spouse/partner associations of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of the EU member states, and the EU Commission External Service. The spouse/partner associations of Iceland, Norway and Switzerland are privileged observers, sharing some membership rights. The EU member states without spouse/partner associations as well as the EU Accession and Candidate states have observer status.

Members
The current members of EUFASA are Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, EU Commission, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom.

Purpose
The purpose of EUFASA is the exchange of information and ideas among its members with a view to improving the provisions relating to spouses, partners and families of officers employed by the EU Foreign Ministries. It aims to identify effective family support practices, and to raise awareness both at national and EU level and gain support for family-friendly policies within the EU Ministries of Foreign Affairs.

Work
EUFASA’s work takes place at its annual two-day conference, and on a members’ website between Conferences. The website houses a members’ notice board, information, a discussion forum, where members can raise and discuss issues of interest, and online working groups where topics are prepared for the next Conference. Conferences have taken place once a year since 1985, usually hosted by the association whose country has EU presidency in the first half of the year. These Conferences are dependent on the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the country hosting the Conference. The XXI EUFASA Conference was held in Helsinki in May 2005, and the next Conference will be in Vienna in March 2006.

Topics of interest to EUFASA include

• spouse/partner employment and pension provisions
• education, especially children with special needs
• separation and divorce
• foreign born spouses
• health/insurance issues
• security/safety issues

These themes recur in different forms, along with topics pertaining to the structure and mechanisms of EUFASA itself, in the working groups and the Conference presentations. Some topics merit EUFASA-wide surveys where information is often elicited both from the associations and their Ministries.
At the end of each EUFASA Conference a letter is drafted summarising the Conference and outlining any recommendations arising from the Conference, and each association is requested to present it to its own Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Association hosting the Conference is Chair of EUFASA from the 1st of July preceding the Conference until the 30 June of the following year. There is a EUFASA troika consisting of the previous, the current and the next Chair of EUFASA.

In recent years EUFASA has made presentations at the COADM meetings in Brussels – usually ‘dans les marges’ but on occasion as part of the meeting. This is the only EU forum which gives EUFASA a voice and an opportunity to inform and influence family-policy in the EU Ministries of Foreign Affairs.

History
It was a Greek diplomat’s wife who came up with the idea of a meeting between the different European Community Diplomatic Spouses Associations, and in 1985, during the Italian Presidency of the EC, the first ECDSSA conference was organised by the Italian Association (Associazioni Consorti Dipendenti del Ministero Affari Esteri). Since then there has been a EUFASA Conference every year.

Landmarks

1989 – The fifth EUFASA Conference was held in Madrid.

1996 – The agenda for the Conference in Rome was based for the first time on the presentations of the working groups. A newsletter was compiled and circulated by Ireland.

1997 – The agenda was based on the themes developed by the working groups for this Conference in The Hague. The Legal Status of EUFASA was raised for the first time.

1999 –The idea of a website was first raised at the Conference in Bonn and a decision was taken to have a EUFASA office in Brussels, staffed by a volunteer from the association whose country had the EU Presidency in the second half of the year.

2000 – There was general approval for a EUFASA website at the Conference in Lisbon, as well as a decision to close down the office in Brussels. The feasibility of having a Permanent Representative in Brussels to lobby the EU would be explored. As well as the traditional observers (Iceland, Norway and Switzerland), there were three guest observers from Brazil, Cape Verde and Guinea Bissau.

2002 – In addition to the usual observers the Conference in Madrid was attended by the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania and Poland. In May the Spanish Presidency invited EUFASA to present to COADM their follow-up paper on spouse employment; and in December, at the invitation of the Danish Presidency, a paper on pension provisions was presented ‘dans les marges’ and for the first time there were two presentations within the meeting – on partner policy and the Nordic job data-base.

2003 – Observers from Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Turkey attended the Conference in Athens, and Hungary was given an opportunity to introduce how it had set up its association in the past year. The EUFASA guidelines were introduced and adopted as interim until the next Conference. In 2003 ten countries acceded to the EU which gave rise to a decision to help those without spouse/family associations to establish them. This led to the Prague Conference, which brought together HR personnel from the MFA’s of the EU accession and candidate states, and was held by DFSA and the Czech MFA in an effort to stress the importance of good family policy and the benefits of a spouse/family association.

2004 – Cyprus, Hungary and Poland attended the Conference in Dublin as EUFASA members for the first time. Six of the remaining new EU member states (Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta and Slovenia), as well as Romania and Turkey, attended as observers. The EUFASA guidelines were adopted. It was agreed to proceed with a new public area of the website.

2005 – At the Conference in Helsinki workshops, where topics of interest were discussed in smaller groups, were successfully introduced. The new public website was unveiled and approved.