An online meeting of the COTEC Executive Committee took place between the 26^th and the 27^th of January via Zoom. It was a busy but productive two days with a full agenda of items to work through. Minutes of the Interim Meeting will be available in the Members section on COTEC’s website.

With the new strategic plan active from 2025-2028, this being the first year, the members of the Executive Committee spent a significant amount of time highlighting priorities for the first year which are based on the new strategic goals. Every executive team member took 10 minutes to identify priorities in this year’s action plan. Discussions afterward led to the development of COTEC’s theme for implementing the strategic goals in 2025: Strengthening networks. Furthermore, the following priorities were identified for 2025: Further developing and improving the newly launched website, continuously developing the communication with COTEC’s Member Associations, improving opportunities for engagement and meaningful collaboration, and developing strategies to promote and support Occupational Therapy practitioners who are members of their national associations. In line with those priorities, a COTEC-internal network mapping document was created as a starting point to highlight existing collaborations with stakeholder groups and identify potential gaps and missed opportunities for advocacy and collaboration. 

At the OT-Europe Congress in Krakow 2024, COTEC hosted a lunch meeting with Presidents from our Member Associations. At the interim meeting, the members of the Executive Committee discussed how COTEC could implement their feedback. In line with the strategic goals and respective actions, COTEC aims to support communication and information exchange between Member Associations and therefore developed an outline for COTEC Member sessions (“Coffee with COTEC”). These informal sessions aim to facilitate discussions, suggesting meetings three times annually for COTEC’s Members Associations (i.e., representatives, board members, and staff).

As always, collaboration and building connections were high on the agenda, and the Executive Committee reviewed current involvements in working groups such as the Harnessing Talent Platform and the Health Technology Assessment Network. The successful collaboration with ESLA (European Speech and Language Therapy Association) will also continue in 2025: A video of all shortlisted projects for the COTEC-ESLA award has been published. These projects may be a meaningful resource for COTEC’s members, showcasing the beauty of and opportunities for clinical interprofessional collaboration. Even though 2025 has just started, some time was spent planning the Governance Day and General Assembly. This included the drafting of the Governance Day agenda and the related business for the General Assembly. We are looking forward to welcoming the representatives of COTEC’s Member Associations between the 26^th and 27^th of September in Berlin.