WSSTP interview

Why did you decide to establish an international association under Belgian law?

WSSTP was created as a consortium consisting of a network of stakeholders with free membership. It received financing from the European Commission for its operational activities (mainly the Secretariat and the organisation of meetings). These funds were used during our 3 first years; we then had to ask ourselves whether we wanted to maintain the platform and how we would organise it. We decided to establish a non-profit association under Belgian law.

The first reason for establishing an international association under Belgian law was our need to improve the ETP governance structure, which we needed to maintain our shared objective of bringing different actors together to discuss research topics and develop them at European level. An equally important reason was the need for financing for the Secretariat.

We decided to choose Belgium as the country where we would be based in order to be able to be close to the European Commission and other organisations.

Did you encounter any specific problems?

Problems appeared at the initial stage when designing the rules for setting up the association. As we are all researchers not lawyers it took us quite some time.

Additionally we find it difficult to overcome the problem that in many cases national basis for cooperation makes bringing research centres and the industry together to perform research activities and develop new solutions. We think it might be due to the fact the water sector is quite sensitive and disperse in the majority of the EU countries.

How do you see the future of your ETP?

There are quite a lot of associations at the European and international level (International Water Association) that deal with water issues and provide fora for discussion. But in most cases they focus on political issues. Our association is the only European entity that concentrates on research and technological development in the field of water.

Our aim is to foster the evolution of the water sector, which is somewhat conservative. We would like to be able to work with common tools, to coordinate the efforts of researchers based in different countries and to disseminate new technologies throughout Europe.

We are also maintaining our work on updating our SRA.