The meeting was opened by GB on 13 May 3003 at 14:30 h, welcoming the three other members UB, FD, and HF.

HF gave the information that subsequent to the meeting of the representatives of the national and regional societies for separation science in Leipzig, expression of the intent to participate in EuSSS have been received from

• the executive committee of the Chromatographic Society of the UK, by letter signed by its President Christopher D Bevan on 13 Nov. 02;
• the executive board (Vorstand) of the Working Party „Separation Science“ of the German Chemical Society, by protocol of its meeting on 28 Nov 02, signed by Werner Engewald;
• the members of the board of the Norwegian Chromatography Symposium, by letter signed by the member Tyge Greibrokk on 02 Dec. 02, with the consent of E. Jellum, the chairman;
• the General Assembly of the Sociedad Espanola de Cromatografia y Tecnicas Afines (SECyTA), by letter signed by the President M T Galceran on 09 Dec 02;

the Division of Chromatography of the Slovak Chemical Society, by e-mail of D. Berek, the President of SChS, in place of the seriously ill E. Brandstetterova, division head, on 07 Jan 03,

the Committee on Analytical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences, in cooperation with the Polish Chemical Society, by letter signed by the Scientific Secretary M. Trojanowicz, on 10 Jan 03;

the Association Francophone des Sciences Separatives, by letter signed by the member of the steering committee M.C. Hennion on 16 January 2003;

the Austrian Society for Analytical Chemistry, by letter signed by W. Lindner on 28 January 2003 in which he expressed the recommendation of integration in the DAC activities of FECS;

the Analytical Chemistry Section (SAC) of the Royal Dutch Chemical Society, by letter signed by the Chairman R. Tijssen on 01 February 2003 in which he suggested to develop close ties to the Californian group CaSSS;

the Italian Society for Separation Science, by letter signed by the President F. Dondi on 15 April 2003;

the Chromatography and Electrophoresis Group of the Royal Chemical Society of the UK, by letter signed by the Chairman T. Lynch on 17 June 2003;

the Chromatography and Electrophoresis Group of the Czech Chemical Society by letter signed by the Chairman V. Kasicka on 25 June 2003, and

Hungary (to be received).

HF also reported on his contacts to Higuinaldo Neves of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa who intends to found a Portuguese Society for Separation Science and who sees in an affiliation to EuSSS a strong, needed basis for establishing the former.

No response has been received from Russia (V. Davankov).

GB, UB, and FD emphasised that the development of a wider advertisement of EuSSS by various means is the most important stage during the next period of time.

One of these is an official organ for publication. Towards this goal, HF was asked to approach Wiley offering that JSS should become the official organ of EuSSS for publicising the memorandum and any future news and information in the magazine part (from 2004 in the A-pages) of JSS; in return, Wiley shall be offered the possibility to show the EuSSS-Logo on the front page of JSS.

As another important step, establishment of an Internet page was initiated by GB, with the help of his coworker Märk (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), a domain named www.EuSSS.org was suggested and verified as feasible.

Furthermore, it was agreed that a convention of the national representatives should be organised to take place at the Symposium at Siofok in Sep 2003; a letter with this intention shall be sent to Sz. Niyredi for preparation. Subsequently, as soon as the exact time and location were agreed upon, the member societies shall be informed and asked to name a member as EuSSS-representative for a period of three years who shall be invited to attend this symposium in order to fully establish EuSSS and to discuss the details of the modus operandi in greater detail.

As tentative agenda at the EuSSS-Convention in Siofok, the following points have been suggested:

Representation of the national societies;

Modus Operandi, Structure, potential affiliation of EuSSS within FECS;

Web-site organisation, links and presentation of the national societies;

Financial structure, financial contribution of national societies (e.g. 2 € per person);

Sponsoring, industrial memberships;

Future organisation of EuSSS conferences, symposia;

Europe-wide workshops on selected, important topics;

Ph-D programmes, EU-wide advertisement of open positions.

It was agreed that for an initial period the EuSSS secretariat should be established at the University of Bayreuth; HF estimates that an annual budget of about 15,000 € would be required to maintain the secretariat, an amount which should be partly covered by membership fees, sponsoring, and eventually by organisation of EU-wide workshops and teaching courses.

On the next day,14 May 03 from 09:00 h, the details of the lay-out of the home page of EuSSS was discussed in greater detail by UB, FD, and UB, together with coworker Märk of GB; Märk received several electronic files for setting-up the Internet page which will developed and completed in the next weeks in close interaction with all four members.

Several countries have so far not been addressed or involved in the activities to establish EuSSS because of the absence of colleague scientists in the relevant meetings and/or the unknown form of organisation in the respective national society, if existent. The task to clarify the situation and to approach colleagues which might help to establish connections to the respective countries has been distributed to UB (Ireland, Slovenia, Switzerland), FD (Israel/Grushka, Greece), and HF (Belgium, Denmark/Hansen, Finland/Riekkola, Portugal/Neves, Sweden/Westerlund, Ukraine).