EURAO at Helsinki CEPT meeting

As you remember, last year EURAO signed a LoU with CEPT/ECC in order to cooperate in all Amateur Radio issues. This year, EURAO has been kindly invited to participate in the 85th meeting of its Working Group Frequency Management (WG FM), held on 23-27 May, 2016, in Helsinki, Finland.

In this meeting, EURAO had the great opportunity to present itself to all other event attendees, national administrations and observers, like Wi-Fi Alliance, EBU (Eurovision) or NATO, just to name a few.

CEPT was established in 1959 and nowadays has 48 country members from Central and Eastern Europe.

CEPT structure comprises three committees (ECC, CERP and Com-ITU) and a permanent office in Copenhagen: the European Communications Office (ECO).

Within the ECC there are several working groups (WG). Frequency Management (FM) is one of them, which in turn has other subgroups, like the Radio Amateur Forum Group (RA FG), which most interest us.

Below you will find a list of CEPT recommendations regarding Amateur Radio.

One of the advantages of these recommendations is that other countries than members can join them. For example, CEPT Radio Amateur Licence is adopted also by: Australia, Canada, Israel, overseas countries and territories of the Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, South Africa and USA. Negotiation with others is underway.

So, let's keep working together for radio amateurs.

CEPT Recommendations for Radio Amateurs

The European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) has produced a series of recommendations and deliverables very useful for radio amateurs world wide, because a lot of non-CEPT countries also adopted them. Here it is a summary:

• T/R 61-01: CEPT Radio Amateur Licence: entitles its holder to operate in a lot of countries that have adopted it, without obtaining an individual temporary licence.
• T/R 61-02: Harmonised Amateur Radio Examination Certificate (HAREC): shows proof of successfully passing an amateur radio examination and facilitates the issuing of an individual licence in a different country.
• ECC/REC(05)06: CEPT Novice Radio Amateur Licence: similar to T/R 61-01, but for novice licences (medium level).
• ECC/REC(14)05: Amateur Radio Licence Examinations for Persons with Disabilities: with the same syllabus of T/R 61-02, this claims for different facilities depending on the kind of disability.

There are also two documents, ERC Report 32 and ECC Report 89, describing the syllabus examinations for the novice and entry-class licences and a new website devoted to Radio Amateurs and CEPT task: http://www.cept.org/ecc/topics/radio-amateurs/