The congress traditionally held in Rosenheim and organized by the IFT institute reunited in 2013 more than 970 specialists from 23 countries around the world. The massive degree of internationalization demonstrates the professional credibility of the German association regarding various issues in the domain of thermal insulating assemblies. Organized under the motto "Safety and comfort - essential conditions for improving the quality of life" the event occasioned a comprehensive approach that included, among others, issues related to energy rehabilitation characteristics of glass elements and the impact of this on the overall performance of buildings, market trends, growth prospects for the industry, turning the passive house concept into the plus-energy building, security features, legislative news etc. Ulrich Sieberath, president of the Institute, gave a speech on the main theme of the event, emphasizing the specific elements affecting the European industry. In the last 10 years there have been major improvements in terms of performance of windows and doors. The main driving force which acted in this direction was established by the European legislation for energy efficiency, resulting in a tremendous increase in the quality of products. The positive trend was also influenced to a large extent by the phenomenon of globalization, which has resulted in the emergence of impressive production capacity both in the EU and in emerging regions. Unfortunately, during the recession, the demand has declined considerably on different local markets, so massive pressures have applied in regions characterized by greater financial power, such as Germany, whose window imports increased very much in the last three years. For this reason, the domestic producers were forced to adapt to the new competitive conditions and provide additional benefits to customers, in order to secure their loyalty. Currently, the EU law is more and more restrictive, especially with regard to the emission properties of volatile organic compounds (VOC), user safety, energy labelling etc.