The initial meeting of European EQA organizers was conducted at the 8th European Congress of Clinical Chemistry in June 1989, Milan, Italy. Here a plan for further collaboration was established and in December of the same year, a meeting of 23 European EQA organizers was held in Brussels in conjunction with a meeting on reference methods and reference materials, organized by the European Union agency Community Bureau of Reference (BCR). This was the first meeting between the EQA organizers involved in biochemistry and endocrinology. Later on there were also meetings in haematology and microbiology.
At the 9th European Congress of Clinical Chemistry in Cracow in 1991, Adam Uldall (Denmark) took the initiative to create three working groups (WG) on EQA related issues: 1) WG A on performance standards in EQA, 2) WG B on target values in EQA, and 3) WG C on control materials in EQA.
The informal collaboration between European EQA organizers was formalized in 1996 in Pont à Mousson, France, having the inaugural meeting with the foundation of EQALM.
Exchange of information between EQA organisers is one of the major objectives of EQALM. Therefore, since the start in 1996, EQALM has organized annual meetings that gives members as well as non-members the opportunity to meet and exchange knowledge on EQA topics.
Stavelin A, Albe X, Meijer P, Sarkany E, MacKenzie F. Biochem Med (Zagreb). 2017 Feb 15;27(1):30-36.