With the Congress already shaping up to be the European Chemistry event of the year not to miss, EuChemS President, Professor Pilar Goya delves into what the Congress encompasses, how it brings together scientists from across Europe and beyond, and how it embraces an increasingly interdisciplinary agenda.

Read the Editorial online now from the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (GDCh) – the German Chemical Society’s Angewandte Chemie journal.

EuChemS Past President, and current Vice-President Professor David Cole-Hamilton demonstrates through a thorough and highly informative essay what EuChemS is, how it works, why it does what it does, and what it means for science and policy. By exploring our activities and events, Cole-Hamilton displays an active and lively network of scientists from across Europe who together develop unique scientific evidence and advice which we communicate to decision-makers in order to better inform their policymaking work. Formed in the 1970s, EuChemS has grown to represent some 160,000 individuals from 47 member organisations from over 30 countries!

You can read Cole-Hamilton’s essay here in Chemistry, a European Journal (ChemPubSoc), which will be open access until September 2018.

We will have the pleasure of celebrating and commemorating the 100^th, 125^th, and 150^th anniversaries of nine EuChemS member societies that will fall or fell in 2017, 2018 and 2019.

In 2019, the Estonian Chemical Society, the Finnish Chemical Society, the Polish Chemical Society and the Romanian Chemical Society (all founded in 1919) will be celebrating their 100th anniversaries. The German Bunsen Society for Physical Chemistry (founded in 1894) will celebrate its 125th anniversary. In 2018, the Norwegian Chemical Society (founded in 1893) will be celebrating its 125th anniversary, and the Mendeleev Russian Chemical Society and the Swedish Chemical Society in Lund (both founded in 1868) will celebrate their 150th anniversaries. And finally, the GDCh (founded in 1867) commemorated its 150th anniversary in a splendid ceremony in Berlin in 2017. We look very much forward to celebrating all of these anniversaries, as well as the 100th anniversary of IUPAC in 2019 during the welcome reception of the Congress.

Looking to find out more about EuChemS, talk to our team and get involved? Join us at our stand, located in the exhibition hall near the entrance to the Plenary Sessions Auditorium.

We are also pleased to invite you to come and chat at our stand with Professor Reiner Salzer, one of the awardees of the EuChemS Award for Service 2018 and project leader of the 3^rd European Employability Survey for Chemists; and Professor Jan Mehlich, who has played a central role in developing the upcoming EuChemS online course on Chemistry and Ethics.

Find us at our sessions too!

• Our Science Communication and Policy Officer, Alex Schiphorst will be talking alongside Susan M. Vickers from the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), Karin J. Schmitz from the German Chemical Society (GDCh) and Sue R. Morrissey from the American Chemical Society (ACS) for a Global Communications Training Session that will explore the different ways of communicating science to different audiences, as well as offer concrete training tips and offer participants an interactive go at polishing their own communication skills. The
  session will be moderated by Menno de Waal, member of the RSC and the EYCN.

When? Monday 27 August, 11:00-13:00
Where? Room 4B
Why join? This session will allow participants to hone their communication skills, receive feedback, and learn from communication experts how to efficiently communicate their research to different audiences!

• EuChemS General Secretary Nineta Hrastelj will be talking alongside the Award for Service Awardee Professor Reiner Salzer, EuChemS Vice-President David Cole-Hamilton, and LaTrease Garrison, Executive Vice President, Education at the American Chemical Society (ACS), for a session moderated by Rigoberto Hernandez, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. The session, entitled Education and Empowering the Future Global Workforce, addressing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, will examine more precisely the Goals numbers 4 and 17, on Quality Education and Partnerships for the Goals. Nineta will then focus on the challenges of Open Education.

When? Tuesday 28 August, 13:00-14:30
Where? Room 4B
Why join? Educational programmes need to convey more than knowledge and developing the skills and abilities to foster solutions for scientifically, politically and economically complex needs has become crucial in an increasingly global environment. Participants will be given the chance to examine the complex questions surrounding educational standards, performance expectations, and assessments fostering the use of evidence-based practices, as well as grasp the intricacies of open science challenges, (global) quality of university education, ethics and industry-academia interactions.

• Join Nineta Hrastelj, EuChemS General Secretary for her talk at the EYCN session where she will look at European funding: Sharing an evaluator’s knowledge, view and experience.

When? Thursday 30 August, 11:30-12:00
Where? Room 12
Why join? Intending on submitting a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action (MSCA) proposal? Join this session to hear what an evaluator is looking for, how the evaluation processes work, and how to make sure your project has what it needs to make it!

And of course, connect with us directly via our social media channels, on Twitter, Facebook and our new LinkedIn page throughout the congress! Tag us with @EuChemS handle and join the discussion through the #euchems2018 hashtag!

As part of our mission in bringing chemistry closer to the heart of policymaking in Europe, we have updated our position on what we want out of the next research framework programme, Horizon Europe, which will follow the current Horizon 2020. Through a simple info-sheet, we have laid out the areas where we believe greater funding will have an immense impact, and where proposals have been deemed insufficient or misdirected.

The budget proposed by the Commission, although an increase from the current research framework programme, will be insufficient if Europe is to be successful in dealing with the many challenges we are facing and will continue to face over the coming years. And whilst we welcome the European Parliament’s call for a €120 billion budget, this is still lacking ambition. We have therefore called, much like the majority of scientific and academic organisations across Europe, for a budget of €160 billion.

The budget proposal for the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, which have proven particularly successful over the last years, is poor. We have therefore also called for a stronger and more ambitious budget – as unfortunately a huge number of excellent proposals are rejected due to lack of funds.

There has moreover been a worrying lack of clarity surrounding the role third countries will have in the programme. But science knows no borders, and we have therefore called for third countries to be able to fully participate. Whether this is the UK, Balkan countries, Switzerland, Norway, Turkey or beyond, we need to work together to ensure Europe remains a champion of research and innovation.

Finally, we have also stressed the absolute necessity of mechanisms that support projects through all TRLs – from basic research right up to commercialisation. To this day, too many wonderful ideas and projects are killed off before they can succeed, and the ‘valley of death’ of innovation continues to hamper the quality and capacity of European innovation.

We will soon release our detailed Position Paper with comments and amendments on the proposals made by the European Commission and the European Parliament Rapporteurs. You can in the meantime take a look at our info-sheet here!