The story
In 1966, Gilberto Bernardini, then president of the Italian Physical Society, convened a meeting of 80 European physicists in Pisa to discuss possibly forming a Pan-European Physical Society. There was agreement in such a society existed, but disagreement about its form which led to the establishment of a Steering Committee. They would attempt to determine if a federation of national physical societies or an independent society with direct personal membership would be the preferred form for the European Physical Society. In a May 1967 meeting in London determined the European Physical Society should be a loose federation of physical societies, and that it should be a service organization, which means it would organize conferences, coordinate European physics publications, and be a communication channel rather than attempting to organize physics research in Europe. On the 26th of September 1968 in Geneva, the European Physical Society was legally incorporated.
From Wikipedia’s article on European Physical Society, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5