The foundation of the PEMC Council and its Secretariat have been proposed by the Hungarian hosts and the chairman of PEMC'96, I. Nagy during the Conference held in Budapest and the invited representatives from Central Europe, from Austria, Czech Republic, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Sloven Republic have voted unanimously for its foundation. The idea was basically the same as the one behind the foundation of EPE earlier, namely to safeguard the continuation of the PEMC Conference series, the oldest one in the continent in Power Electronics and Drives started in 1970. In the coming years the number of participating European countries gradually increased up to near 20.
Right from the very beginning and ever since all works has been done by every member of the PEMC Council and the PEMC Secretariat on voluntary basis. Money has never been involved.
In 1998 during the PEMC'98 Conference held in Prague, Czech Republic chaired by Professor Cerovsky two working groups, one from EPE and an other from PEMC worked out an Agreement for close cooperation and the PEMC Council and Secretariat changed the name from PEMC to EPE-PEMC.
Summarizing briefly the main activities in the past years, the Secretariat
- kept and tried to improve the standard of EPE-PEMC Conferences by the help of the members of EPE-PEMC Council and EPE
- secured the continuation of the EPE-PEMC Conferences
- maintained the traditions
- organized the democratic selection of the venue
- helped the local chairman in many ways in the organization (selection of key-note speakers by corresponding with them, selection of members of various committees)
- disseminated the Call for Papers together with the chairman
- helped to organize Special Sessions, Tutorials, Exhibitions
- maintained a hot line, daily correspondence with the local chairman and organizers especially near the starting day of the Conferences
- organized the meetings of EPE-PEMC-Council
- edited and mailed the EPE-PEMC Newsletters
- kept the contact to other worldwide and national organizations
- provided the permission for using the logo of IEEE and IEE of Japan, etc.
- stimulated the work of the EPE-PEMC Award granting Committee.
Special activity was to shape the good relation with EPE
- to set up a working group and participated to work out the Agreement between EPE and PEMC-C
- to support the EPE activities
- to participate in the work of EPE Executive Council.
The Secretariat organized the election of new members of EPE-PEMC-C.