The VIth World Congress of Anaesthesiology, held in Mexico City in 1976, offered several European participants the opportunity of discovering their community of views. The idea was then launched of establishing a forum for regular exchanges among academic anaesthetists from Europe. After many preliminary discussions, some thirty delegates or observers from the Societies of Anaes thesia of Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, German Federal Re public, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom and Yugoslavia met in Paris on 12 March 1977. They...