The European Confederation of Directors' Associations (ecoDa) is a not-for-profit association founded in December 2004 under the laws of Belgium. Through its national institutes of directors (the main national institutes existing in Europe ), ecoDa represents around fifty-five thousand board directors from across the EU. ecoDa's member organisations represent board directors from the largest public companies to the smallest private firms, both listed and unlisted. ecoDa's mission is - to promote the role of directors, to develop professionalism and European governance standards by acting as a standing body where national experiences in terms of corporate governance are shared and discussed, by developing recommendations and education programmes in complement with those developed by its members, - to influence the European decision-making process related to corporate governance by reacting directly to the European institutions or by pro-actively taking initiatives of actions aimed at generating European debate and reflection on corporate governance, - to provide services to its members, mainly by providing information regarding relevant European issues, - to facilitate at European level the creation and the development of national director institutes dealing with corporate governance and attract new members in order to strengthen the European representativeness of the Confederation.