Alan Smith, President

Last year, shortly after our Lisbon Congress Jim Pickerell, our first speaker today, wrote in Selling Stock that Cepic Congress was the "must attend" meeting of the year for the stock industry.  Well, his message was heard and 625 delegates, and 375 companies from 50 countries have taken his words to heart.  These figures for our 11^th Congress are double those of our Congress in Budapest so short a while ago.

As this is the only time we shall all be together I would like to bring to your attention and to thank the small band of heroes who have made this Congress possible and who have given so much of their time to the work of Cepic, this organisation which represents our industry to the EU and WIPO and which is formed out of the membership of the European national associations.

First I mention our officers, our vice president, Jean Desaunois of FNAPPI, France, our mentor on press matters and our statutes and to whom, importantly, the French president awarded the Legion d'Honneur recently, our treasurer, Steffan Teste, Bildombudsman to Sweden's BLF who is our watchdog on collecting societies and copyright and who additionally finds time to work on the Congress Sub Committee.  On our committee are Paul Brown of Rex Features and the UK's BAPLA, Barbro Kaufman of IMS and SBF Sweden, Peter Remmersen, Picture Press and BVPA Germany and Roel Sandvoort of Hollandse-Hoogte and Holland's HPA.  They all turn up reliably to committee meetings wherever they may be.  Additionally to the committee, I would draw to your attention Katrin Goepel of AKG, Berlin, Paris and London, whose Berlin office houses our administration and supports us in every way, to BLF, our Swedish Association Member which has done so much to organise this Congress, to its member, Bjorn Henriksson for his signage to Nils Frederiksen of Image2Use for his sourcing and help, and, finally, our Administrator Sylvie Fodor, whose efforts and time spent on our behalf go well beyond the EU working hours limits and whose knowledge and experience is of huge benefit to us.

Will they stand whilst we show our appreciation to them all.

Can I urge you all to contribute to our work by becoming supporting members.  For a small fee you, and we, gain a lot.

What brings us all to this "must attend meeting"?  It is, I suggest, the power of the picture.  The "wow" factor, which words cannot rival.  We only have to look at the impact the pictures from Iraq have to realise this.  But that power needs protection for it to flourish.  That is what copyright provides.  The Intellectual Property contained in copyright, WIPO (the World Intellectual Property Organisation) says, is the principal currency of the 21^st century and that is what protects our work and gives the necessary financial returns.

But if copyright defends us and underpins our work, the need to protect it is not the only danger, and that is why this plenary session is about challenges. 

These are difficult times of mergers, takeovers and closures.  It is said in England that a sheep's worst enemy is a sheep and the alliances and networks which form so readily are often defensive within our industry as well as means of using the new technology to find new markets and resist the attempts by publishers, the wolves, in this story, to reward our costly system improvements by cutting prices.

There are many challenges that lie ahead of us and it is to enable us all to be ready for these that we have brought such a distinguished panel of speakers together.  Their biographies are contained in the programme, which you should all have.