European Young Engineers

European Young Engineers is an association of young engineers associations of different European countries. It is based on a rotation system: every six month one member organisation or member state organises a meeting for European Young Engineers in its home country. The meetings usually consist of professional workshops, company visits, cultural excursions and social happenings. In this way, European Young Engineers get to know each other, and they learn about other countries' companies, technical innovation areas and cultural cities. EYE meetings can be lots of fun but they are also rather demanding on the organisers. Last weekend, I had the honour and the pleasure to speak at the EYE conference in Eindhoven (a great place to be for engineers!).

I was happy to be among the founding members when the Dutch Young Engineers took the initiative to meet the Flemish Young Engineers in Antwerp 25 years ago. Looking back in time, one can identify a number of things that changed since then. EYE was founded only five years after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. We can’t say this European scar has completely disappeared, but a long way has been gone already. We have an integrated market now, and a common European currency for a number of members states. On the technical level, the world has changed as well. The fax has been replaced by the Internet. We have now mobile phones that can do more than one call on a charged battery, and the mobile phone has become a smartphone. We have also seen the emergence of social media since then.

EYE is really a demonstration of positive forces (dunameis) in Europe. On the one hand, the engineering profession is perhaps the profession where international collaboration is most fertile, especially for young engineers. On the other hand, this collaboration is pleasant and it creates lasting relationships. Europe needs courageous vanguard movements like EYE. I’m so glad this initiative continues and flourishes. We had to do this because it was possible. What you can do, you also have to do. I refer to earlier blogs related to Europe.