Goal
In a declaration addressed to the FIMM HPB, the FIMM Executive Board has defined the goal in terms of UEMS:

• to initiate the positioning of Manual/Musculoskeletal Medicine in Europe as a distinct specialization.

Strategy
In further steps taken by the HPB a group with DGMM and other European FIMM member societies or other groups of Manual/Musculoskeletal specialists shall form a group of sub-specialists and at­tempt recognition by UEMS, including a possible change within the by-laws of the UEMS.

Additional information
There have been several attempts to include Manual/Musculoskeletal Medicine as a partner or member of UEMS^{1, 2, 3, 4}.

The facts are well compiled in Art. 24 of the Rules of Procedure of UEMS (part 2, UEMS specialists section, final text dated May 5, 2003):

…I.1 In order for a discipline to be recognised as a specialty of UEMS, with the view of forming a Specialist Section, it must be recognised as an independent specialty by more than one third of the EU member states, must be registered in the Official Journal of European Commission (Medical Directives) and fulfil the following conditions, as laid down by the Management Council on 3^rd of November 1979:

1. the specialty must be effectively carried on as such, essentially in exclusive practice, by competent specialists;
   

2. the number of these specialists must be sufficient to establish, from among their members, panels of examiners or recognition Committees in that discipline;
   

3. the discipline must be practiced in institutions with sufficient training facilities available for them to be designated as training centres. These institutions must be controlled by spe­cialists of such seniority and experience as to be acknowledged as directors of training (D7927).

It is important to know that UEMS has set high goals in its quality agenda. UEMS considers regulation to be one part of this agenda⁵. In addition UEMS has published a policy paper on Continuing Profes­sional Development as quality improvement: The Basel Declaration (2001)⁶ – that deals with continu­ing professional development as a form of quality improvement – and Promoting Good Medical Care (2004)⁷ on quality assurance.

It is clear that UEMS has set benchmarks, which will not easily be achieved and maybe not achieved at all by Manual/Musculoskeletal Medicine at this time. The FIMM Executive Board, therefore, con­siders it to be impossible to become a full member of UEMS at this point of time and to get a full recognition as a speciality for physicians even though in some member countries of the European Union Manual/Musculoskeletal Medicine is fully recognised as a medical mono-specialty. In many of the FIMM European FIMM-member countries, Manual/Musculoskeletal Medicine is not even recog­nized as a sub-speciality⁸. As a first step the German DGMM reached at least an observatory status in UEMS.

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