FAQ

ECOMET is an economic interest grouping of the National Meteorological Services of the European Economic Area.

The Members of ECOMET are the National Meteorological Services of the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

ECOMET was created end of 1995. ECOMET is an Economic Interest Grouping under Belgian law located in Brussels.
After having confirmed its intention to do so in September 1997, the European Commission (Directorate-General Competition) approved the ECOMET arrangements in October 1999.
The NMS's have developed in ECOMET a legal framework to establish equal competition conditions for the public as well as for the private sector.

Development of legislation by the European Commission led to review of the traditional practices of the NMS's. Particularly in the field of competition and the open market concept the practices of the NMS's wanted to be harmonized with the European Law.

By applying the ECOMET rules, the NMS's, being governmental organizations, comply with the competition rules, as defined by the European Legislation.

The overall aims of ECOMET are:

• To maintain a level playing field for commercial activities in Europe
• To operate and maintain an administrative framework to increase and facilitate the access to data and products throughout Europe (for the ECOMET Members and Third Parties)
• To act as data policy advisors towards the community and interested actors regarding the exchange of meteorological data and products in Europe

• A single catalogue showing all of the data and products of the ECOMET Members that are available for commercial use
• Delivery of all needed information arranged through any one of the Member NMS's.
• No need for bilateral agreements between customers and the originating Member NMS's
• International operators can obtain the information through the NMS in the country of their choice for practical or cost-effective reasons.

You can direct your request to one of the Members of ECOMET.
Each Member has an ECOMET contact point (list of contact points), who can help you with your order. You can order all items from the ECOMET catalogue at the same ECOMET contact point. The ECOMET Secretariat does not handle requests for data but can assist you in case you encounter problems with your data request.

The daily operations of ECOMET are handled by the ECOMET Secretariat. Each year, the Members of ECOMET convene twice in a General Assembly to discuss the ECOMET policy. The General Assembly is assisted by the ECOMET working group, which prepares the documents for the General Assembly.

The General Assembly can make policy decisions which must be followed by all Members. However, each Member decides individually on its pricing policy.

All items which are used commercially by one of the ECOMET Members, are mandatory included in the ECOMET catalogue and thus available for third parties.