Many years of mutual work and good friendship connect our magazine and Prof. Gunter Grundke. For more than ten years he conducted the course "Innovations in packaging" for Russian specialists, working on probation in Germany under the Chamber of Commerce in Leiptzig. In 1999 during the regular "Interpack" exhibition Mr. Igor Smorenniy, Editor-in-Chief of the "Tara I Upakovka" magazine, in cooperation with Dr. Gunter Grundke and other colleagues from the Eastern Europe participated in foundation of the European Packaging Institute. In the following article you may find the thoughts of Dr. G. Grundke about present and future of the packaging market in Europe