A new board member and a new head office

The European Fireplaces Association (EFA) presents its strategy at the spring conference in Erfurt

This year’s European Fireplaces Association (EFA) spring conference, which was held on 26 and 27 April in Erfurt, focused on the numerous internal changes that have taken place. The first of these is a board member change: Jürgen Böhm (Erlus) will be replacing Michaela Waldecker. Uwe Striegler, the chairman of the EFA board, welcomed Böhm as an “industry insider and doer”.

At the conference, Sabrina Rippl, a representative of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB), spoke about particulates, an issue that is currently of great concern to everyone, including the other speakers, Markus Schlichter from Germany’s national association of chimney sweeps, and Dr.-Ing. Julian Schwark (from Zentralverband Deutscher Schornsteinfeger, Germany’s chimney sweep union). EFA chairman Striegler emphasised that the association is addressing this issue in a discriminating and constructive way and is encouraging as many stakeholders as possible to join in the discussion.

EFA’s growth and professionalisation strategy is associated with quite a few changes. At the spring conference, which will be held bilingually in German and English from now on, it was announced that the association’s head office will move to Berlin. The reason for the move is the increasing number of meetings in Germany’s capital, which can now be dealt with more efficiently. Another change: In future, anyone interested in the association’s work can learn more about it on the Twitter channel EFA_Europe.