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In particular, at the General meeting GM-14 in
November 2001, a number of minor changes
were made to clarify the meaning of certain
statutes and by-laws, and to remove minor
conflicts between some statutes and related
by-laws. A change was also made to the
by-laws to allow electronic communication,
rather than postal communication, in certain
situations. The original constitution and by-
laws were derived mainly from the study
and research of M. Berthaud with the help
of E. Thomas. However, changes in the
Belgian law led to modify the Union statutes.
The new statutes were approved at the
17th General Meeting held in Beijing in 2010.
The major modification was the move to
an annual (rather than a triennial) budget in
addition to minor changes to procedures.
The schedule of General Meetings had thus
to be changed as one has to be held each
year (see section 5).
The objectives of the Union are to
promote, encourageanddevelopvacuum
science, techniques and the applications
of vacuum in all countries. The Union
encourages the establishment of national
vacuum societies and committees in
countries where they do not yet exist
and may coordinate the activities of
those national organisations in countries
where they do exist.The Union promotes
and coordinates international meetings
and develops educational material for
international use. It publishes notices
of national and international meetings
related to vacuum and other vacuum
activities of international interest.
The interests of the IUVSTA encompass
not only vacuum per se, but those
disciplines which use vacuum as an
important tool. It established Divisions
in 1977 to promote these disciplines
on an international scale. The growth
in membership of IUVSTA from 1962 to
2016 is shown in Table I and is discussed
later in detail in Section 10.
Until 2010 the official languages of the
Union were French, English and German.
Official communications were published
in all three languages with the original text
indicated. Although all three languages
were initially used during meetings with
instant translations provided, this had
soon become prohibitively expensive and
most presentations were finally delivered
in English. Since 2010, French is the
official language and English is the working
language of the Union.
The Representatives of ECM-109 Meeting -
2010.08.22, Beijing, China