Page 17 - Annual report 2019

STATEMENT BY STATEMENT 15

THE TREASURER

Situation 2019 Situation 2020
The EEAG evolved in 2019 from an informal consortium Despite a 1,5% increase in membership fees, the departure of
of like-minded partners into a partnership with common FI as a National Member will have an impact on the financial
goal setting, resulting in the design of the Engineers for capabilities of the Organisation. Looking for alternative
Europe or E4E-project on which work has already started, sources of income, be it from EU-funding or from corporate
even without EU-funding. We developed and protected a sponsorship from private stakeholders, will therefore become
new brand, we built an external network of meanwhile 27 an inevitable necessity.
European partners, screened the possibilities for EU-project
funding, developed and sent in a large project proposal under Having served as FEANI Treasurer for six years (2013-
ERASMUS+ and organized three conferences of the EEAG, 2019), I have enjoyed working together with the community
with each time high level speakers and participants. of FEANI National Members, the Internal Auditors and the
Secretary General. I am confident in expressing my support
Further investments in implementing the appealing and to the successful achievement of the corporate strategic
challenging goals of the Engineers Europe Advisory Group goals. I wish FEANI a fruitful pursuit of these ambitious
and especially the revision of the “E4E” proposal required objectives, which I will keep on following from a distance. I
continued efforts for our repositioning and transformation. A thank all partners I have worked with over these years and
co-operation contract was made with an external consultant my appreciation and thanks goes to all of them. 
and two EU-project experienced assessors, until the end
of 2019. Despite a first qualification failure in July 2019, I
believe that we must continue to pursue our endeavours
and send in a modified project proposal later this year or in
early 2020. Writing EU project proposals is a complicated and
time-consuming effort. It will also require continued delicate
administrative management, once approved. This, however,
is an investment which will bring FEANI at a level where it
deserves to be.

Unfortunately the funding remains uncertain. This is the
reason why 2019 closed with a corporate loss of EUR 31k,
which was, however, less then expected. This loss did not
relate to excessive costs, but rather to lacking the budgeted
income from three (3) FEANI National Member countries
not having paid their membership fee. Nevertheless, every
effort has been made in 2019 to meet the two most critical
elements strategic goals : design and dispatch of an “EU
project proposal” and developing the EEAG as an informal
think-thank.