On 19 February, close after the Inauguration Ceremony of EHRI as a permanent organisation (a European Research Infrastructure Consortium – ERIC), the first meeting of the General Assembly took place online.

Now that EHRI is no longer project based, but an actual organisation, the governance structure has changed fundamentally.

The two main governance bodies are the General Assembly and the National Coordinators Committee. The General Assembly is made up of representatives of the governments of the countries that are a member of the EHRI-ERIC and therefore financially support it.

The first General Assembly of the ERIC counted participants from the ten founding countries (Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Israel, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovak Republic, UK ). Belgium which is close to joining EHRI-ERIC also participated as a guest. The participants were not new to each other as most of them had already worked together in the stages leading to the foundation of the ERIC. During the meeting much of the work that had been done before and that is a necessity for any proper organisation, such as statutes and policies, was presented and approved.

Election of Chairs and Founding Director

An important item on the agenda was the election of the Chair of the General Assembly, the Vice-Chair and the Founding Director of EHRI-ERIC. We are pleased to present the chosen candidates:

The Chair of EHRI’s first General Assembly is Naďa Dřizga, who works for the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. She was an active member of the interim-General Assembly that preceded the current one. Her focus is on research infrastructures in Social Sciences and Humanities and she is also the Czech delegate at CLARIN, DARIAH and various other infrastructures. This makes her the perfect fit for the job.

The Vice-Chair is Moritz Wein from Austria. He is the Deputy Head of the Department for bilateral international Affairs in Education at the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science, and Research. He is also the co-Head of the Department of International Affairs, as well as a member of the Austrian delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). He has been working on Holocaust education and the prevention of antisemitism for more than ten years. Moritz Wein was elected Vice-Chair.

Both the Chair and the Vice-Chair took the opportunity to thank the previous chair of the interim General Assembly Jacqueline Mout from the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science for her excellent work.

Also on the agenda was the election of the Founding Director of the EHRI-ERIC. By unanimous vote, the assembly appointed Reto Speck, a well-known name in the EHRI community. Reto Speck has worked for EHRI since 2010, initially on the EHRI Portal and later in a leadership role.  He highlighted that he felt it was a privilege to lead the establishment of the ERIC and it will be a privilege to lead the ERIC’s first phase.

All three appointments were received with cheers by the delegates, knowing that the new organisation will be in safe hands.

To find out more about EHRI’s new governance structure, visit our Frequently Asked Questions.