General Assembly approves election of Chapple to Secretary General Elect

This morning’s General Assembly saw the approval of three candidates for positions on the EAU Board. Prof. Chris Chapple (Sheffield, GB) was elected to the position of Secretary General Elect, which he will hold for the coming year. Chapple is set to take the place of Prof. Per-Anders Abrahamsson (Malmö, SE) as Secretary General at next year’s Annual Congress. Prof. James N’Dow (Aberdeen, GB) was approved as Chairman of the Guidelines Office, and Dr. Michiel Sedelaar (Nijmegen, NL) will take the new position of Young Urologists Office Chairman.

More than 90% of those present approved Chapple’s election, with vast majorities agreeing with the appointment of N’Dow and Sedelaar. Speaking shortly after his election, Prof. Chapple reflected: “This is a great honour, and it represents an enormous responsibility. I’m committed to the EAU and, as Secretary General Elect, I look forward to working closely with the Board and the central office.”

Opening the meeting, Prof. Abrahamsson thanked Prof. Arnulf Stenzl (Tübingen, DE) and the Scientific Congress Office for assessing the 4269 abstracts submitted for this year’s congress. Just over 29% was selected to make up the scientific programme’s 102 sessions. Abrahamsson underlined the importance of quality over quantity.

Significant changes were discussed by Prof. Walter Artibani (Verona, IT), as executive member responsible for science. The chairs of the nine Young Academic Urologists will become ex-officio members of the board of their respective EAU Section, with other members of the working groups becoming associate members. This will allow for both closer collaboration as well as a constant stream of “fresh blood” into the boards.

The regional office was pleased to announce a very successful 2013: the Central and South Eastern European Meetings had high attendance thanks to reforms in their scientific programmes since the appointment of Prof. Bob Djavan’s (Vienna, AT) as Chair. The meetings now feature hands-on training as well as a very popular and competitive Country Competition. This year also sees the return of the Baltic Meeting on 23-25 May, 2014 in Vilnius, Lithuania.

The Education Office presented the success of EUREP-like collaborative residents’ programmes in both China (CUEP) and (in 2014) in Latin America (CAUREP). Over a dozen ESU courses will be held at National Society meetings in 2014, in addition to the 41 ESU courses organized for this Congress in Stockholm and standalone masterclasses on various topics, including a new one on Lasers in Urology to be held in Barcelona later this year.