Metre Convention
For 125 years the countries forming the Metre Convention – more than 50 today – have endeavoured with great success to enforce the 
metric system worldwide. The organs of the Metre Convention have different tasks: Every four years the delegates of all member states meet to hold the General Conference for Weights and Measures (CGPM). This decides on the proposals of the International Committee for Weights and Measures (CIPM) as well as of the individual Consultative Committees. The executive organ is the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (
BIPM) which has its seat in Sèvres near Paris and is a scientific institute maintaining the international measurement standards for the physical quantities and works on their permanent development within the framework of its metrological basic research.
PTB president Prof. Dr. Ernst O. Göbel was president of the Metre Convention from 2004 to 2010.
EURAMET
Under the umbrella of EURAMET the national metrology institutes in the European Union and the EFTA states coordinate their activities. The most important objectives are to jointly develop new, improved metrological standards, to facilitate the link-up with these standards in the individual countries under identical conditions and to jointly make available or use standards or measuring devices.
COOMET
This acronym stands for "Euro-Asian Cooperation of National Metrological Institutions". The organization is formed by the national metrology institutes of 17 countries from Eastern and Central Europe and Asia as well as of Cuba with a view to setting up and extending a sound metrology system and to throwing bridges to the western metrology institutes such as the PTB which is a COOMET member, too. COOMET deals, just as its model, the EURAMET, with intercomparisons of standards. In 1999 a COOMET Legal Metrology working group was founded.
Additional information:
Thematic tour "PTB as the guardian of the units"
© Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, last update: 2011-11-17, Volker Großmann
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