The European Environment and Health Strategy (COM (2003) 338 final) adopted by the European Commission on June 11^th 2003 presented a new vision on how to address environment and health in an integrated way and puts health in the centre of environmental policy.

Based upon the Strategy the Commission adopted in June 2004 a Communication on the Environment and Health Action Plan 2004 - 2010 (Volume I + Volume II), also presented at the Fourth Ministerial Conference on "Environment and Health" in Budapest in June 2004. In Action 3 of this Action Plan the European Commission announces to develop a coherent approach to Human Biomonitoring in Europe in close cooperation with the Member States.

For the implementation of Action 3 the Commission has set up the Technical Working Group (TWG) Biomonitoring of Children, which was one of the 9 TWGs set up to assist the European Commission in the preparation of the "Action Plan 2004-2010". The Group consists of HBM experts from several Member States and Croatia. This TWG has been expanded to include more Member States and is now called the Implementation Group on Human Biomonitoring.