ESF Executive Board members meet four times a year for a meeting. The fall meeting is always scheduled for the post-season period, so that the Board can take a look back at the finished season, all the reports, as well as the financial matters.

The 2015 fall meeting took place in Haarlem, Netherlands on October 24th - 26th. It was announced in the beginning of November, that the European Baseball and Softball Steering Committee (EBSSC) was established. Also for this reason, Jan Esselman, the CEB (Confederation of European Baseball) president accepted an invitation to take part in the meeting and to present CEB Executive Board's thoughts on this issue. A press release covering this topic will be published shortly.

ESF treasurer Eddy Van Straelen takes great care of the ESF budget and he presented the 2015 financial report, as well as the prediction of the 2016 budget, which was also discussed with other members.

Reports from the chiefs of Umpires and Technical Commissioners were presented later on. There were also a few new proposals made in Technical Regulations, also the Pick Up Players rule was discussed again. There are some good news for accredited photographers, which we will present as soon as practicable.

One of the main points of the October meeting was to take a look at the 2016 ESF season calendar and the competition hosts. There are still a few competitions waiting for their organizer to sign up; the European Super Cup Men and also the two newly established competitions; Men's Slowpitch Championship and the Softball Masters. Nomination is also still open for the 2017 Championships in Junior Men and Co-ed Slowpitch categories. You can check on the rest of dates and organizers here.

The media crew presented some interesting numbers from the last period and introduced a number of new ideas and projects.  The media accreditation system has also gone through reconstruction and if you get to visit our website from time to time, you may have noticed some improvements as well. 

The next-day meeting was dedicated to the ESF Congress. There's a working group making sure that the Congress is planned well and everything goes smoothly when the event starts in February.

All the news and decisions, that were made or discussed during the meeting, will be introduced to the National Federations' delegates at the ESF Congress. Now it's time for the committees of Development, Technical and Competitions, Financial and Marketing and Media to prepare their documents and reports for presentation at the Congress.

-Helena Novotná-