To provide the legal and financial framework necessary to organise the ECI, a European Economic Interest Grouping - EEIG ECI-EFIS - was established in 2006. At present, the following national immunology societies are EEIG ECI-EFIS members/stakeholders:
- Société Française d’Immunologie (SFI)
- British Society of Immunology (BSI)
- Deutsche Gesellschaft für Immunologie (DGfl)
- Società Italiana di Immunologia, Immunologia Clinica e Allergologia (SIICA)
- Scandinavian Society for Immunology (SSI)
- Sociedad Espanola de Inmunologia (SEI)
- Österreichische Gesellschaft für Allergologie und Immunologie (ÖGAI)
- Nederlandse Vereniging voor Immunologie (NVVI)
- Türk İmmünoloji Derneği (TSI)
with EFIS representing societies with fewer than 500 members.
Briefly, the EEIG ECI-EFIS was created to pool and to capitalize on the strengths of national societies and to provide an organizational and financial framework for the ECI. An important provision of the Grouping's membership criteria is the commitment of its stakeholders not to hold their annual national meetings in years when the ECI is staged. The EEIG ECI-EFIS, and not any single hosting national society, is responsible for the revenues or losses resulting from the ECI. As a non-profit entity, the EEIG ECI-EFIS shares proportionally among its members any revenues or losses resulting from the ECI, with any profits being subject to taxation in the hands of its members.
Click here for an informative article, published in 2010, summarizing the EEIG ECI-EFIS and the motivations underlying its establishment.
