ECCO endorses the governance practices of its umbrella organisations, , UEG and Biomedical Alliance in Europe, and its Code of Conduct for Healthcare Professionals and Scientific Organizations, which maintains that
“As health care and knowledge are highly valuable public benefits, it is of the utmost importance that they are delivered in an independent way.
It follows that governance, organisation, and activities are independent from any interest – such as governmental, commercial or personal interests – but those of the medical specialty and its practitioners. Assuring this necessitates transparency to allow the assessment of independence; and, when assessed, accountability to the members, to the patients and to society.”
The ECCO Code of Conduct complements these principles, with its own approach to and implementation of our shared core values: Quality, Integrity, and Transparency.
ECCO also follows the relevant codes of practice for live events, publications, CME accreditation, and external partnerships from these organisations:
- Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)
- International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)
- European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA)
- MedTech Europe
- European Union of Medical Specialists (UEMS)
For the upcoming ECCO’26 Abstract submission, a major upgrade of the disclosure procedure of potential CoIs is introduced.
For many years, ECCO has made strong efforts to centralise the CoI disclosures for ECCO Officers and invited congress faculty to an annual and comprehensive update round (in line with the academic year) – centrally captured and addressing all activities for throughout the academic year.
We are now intergrating the collection of abstract author disclosures into this collection round and therefore the typical ECCO procedures will undergo important changes:
- The ECCO’26 abstract submission will open at the beginning of September.
- NEW for every ECCO Officer, invited congress faculty and potential abstract authors!
The collection of the updated disclosures will open at the beginning of September as well:
Please make sure to complete your CoI Disclosure statement in YOUR PORTAL ACCOUNT before November 3, 2025. It is absolute key to complete the task within the official timeframe because subsequently this portal field will be locked.
- If you plan to submit an abstract, please encourage all your co-authors to complete this CoI Disclosure step before submitting the abstract in order to ensure a smooth abstract submission experience.
For this reason, the CoI collection will be closed two weeks before the abstract submission closing, in order to allow submitting authors to rely on the final set of submitted COIs for this year within this 2 week-window.
A new feature in the abstract submission process will automatically pull CoI information from each co-author‘s profile and add it to the submission entry. The prerequisite for this functionality to work is, that all co-authors have their CoI information updated in their profiles for the new academic year.
ECCO reserves the right to reject submitted abstracts with missing or incomplete CoI information.
We trust that with these steps we can join forces to further enhance the transparency among the IBD Family at the ECCO Congress and beyond.
On behalf of the ECCO Governing Board
