The spring 2026 meeting of the European Beer Consumers Union took place in Rome on 10-11 April. Reuben and I attended for Beoir.

It was the first time there was no formal representation from CAMRA, either as delegates or the secretary which they’ve always provided, but it still all worked and was productive. CAMRA announced last year that they’re leaving, though their membership doesn’t end until July.

The organisation’s financial health still seems pretty good without CAMRA, and it’s getting better at running things leanly (Beoir has taught them a lot!) Two new associate members joined: the Danish beer judges and the Italian beer ladies’ society. The Spanish homebrewers, who have been members since 2017 or so, announced that they’ll be leaving, however.

The big agenda item was the launch of the Know Your Beer campaign, and I’ve published the press release for that here.

The European Commission has recently started a new programme for consumer issues in general, and EBCU will be getting involved with that, where possible. One of the strands is about smoothing out cross-border trade, which is a massive thing for us in Ireland as it’s all but impossible to do legally with beer. Whether or not it can be improved or not is a different issue, but it’s an opportunity to engage with the EU authorities, which EBCU doesn’t really do enough of.

EBCU is also planning to start endorsing beer education courses. It already does this for competitions: setting out the criteria that they need to follow to be considered fair and valid. Now the plan is to put together criteria for beer courses to separate the good ones from any that are too closely tied to commercial brewing interests or are otherwise not worth doing.

The next meeting is 6-7 November in Berlin.