Online move for ESTA Autumn meeting
By Alex Dahm01 September 2021

ESTA’s Autumn meeting, planned as an in-person event in Helsinki, Finland, on 14 and 15 October, has had to be changed to online-only. New restrictions relating to Covid-19 have been announced by the Finnish government.
Ton Klijn, ESTA director, explained, “We are very sorry we have to bring you this news, as ESTA was really looking forward to meeting everyone in person after such a long time.
“But last week we were informed by INFRA, our host organisation in Finland, that the Finnish government has issued new restrictions for meetings as a result of a new upsurge in Covid-19 cases in the country.
“This has prompted the INFRA board to inform ESTA that unfortunately they cannot host the meeting in Helsinki as planned, which left ESTA no other option but to cancel it.”
ESTA tried to move the meeting to another country but with the pandemic still a concern, that was too difficult to arrange at such short notice.
Klijn added, “This means we will have to prepare ourselves for yet another ESTA meeting as an online event. We will inform everyone of the details in the coming weeks but we thought it was opportune to inform our members, supporters and friends of the cancellation of the meeting as early as possible.
“We will look forward to ‘meeting’ everyone again during the online meeting – and hopefully in person again in 2022.”