A major development was the formation of the European Experimental NMR Conference (EENC). A number of European workers were keen to establish a more experimental meeting, weighted towards instrumentation and techniques, intended to fulfil the same purpose as the American ENC, which many Europeans could not attend for financial or political reasons. There had been a Dutch NMR Discussion Group in existence for some time and indeed the NMRDG had held a joint meeting with them at the University of Essex in 1973. However, it became clear that a Europe-wide conference would be a useful event. The initial suggestion to have such a meeting was apparently made to Ed Randall by Jim Emsley, who later said the idea had been suggested to him by Kjeld Schaumberg (Copenhagen). It was decided with the substantial impetus of Ed Randall (Queen Mary College, London) to hold the first one in the UK. So such a meeting was arranged and held at the University of Kent in 1974. As it had been successful, both scientifically and financially, it was posthumously renamed the 1st European Experimental NMR Conference, and subsequently, EENCs were held in alternate years. Since this initial meeting, all EENC meeting were organised independently of the NMRDG.

Given the very strong organisational support available from the RSC, it was possible to organise a series of International NMR Conferences. The meetings office at the RSC was led by Dr John Gibson. Tribute must be paid to him for the enormous contribution he made as Meetings Officer at the Chemical Society and then the RSC. It was largely through him that the NMRDG was able to maintain a privileged status as one of the few autonomous "subject" groups.

This long series of International Meetings, 15 in total, was first organized by the NMRDG independently, and then latterly under the auspices of the RSC. The programs for all of these conferences are available on this web site.

The first of these was at Birmingham University in July 1969, and the meetings continued first at 3 yearly intervals and then later at 2 yearly intervals to interleave with the EENC. A letter from Ray Freeman is included here that requests that the NMRDG consider the possibility of holding its international conferences every two years, rather than three, to avoid clashes with the EENC (Freeman_Let.pdf). The scientific program of the international meetings was decided by the NMRDG committee, members of which either took responsibility for organising and chairing one of the sessions, or invited experts to do so. These meetings were truly international in character, attracting both speakers and delegates from all over the world, many of whom became regular attendees over the years. One of the problems of organising meetings and inviting speakers over 12 months in advance was that some invited speakers managed to book their air tickets for the wrong year and tried to attend the conference a year too soon. For example, Jim Emsley invited Bob Vold to speak at the meeting in Exeter University to be held in July 1981. Bob phoned in early July 1980 to ask why he had not had details about the meeting and Jim had to point out that the meeting is “next year, not this”. Having booked flights, Bob and Gitte Vold arrived a week later and had a successful visit, but not in Exeter.

The final independent international meeting took place at Cambridge in 2003. The end came about because of the formation of EUROMAR on 2nd April 2005 by representatives of the NMRDG, the European Experimental Conference (EENC) and of Group Ampere. EUROMAR now organizes an annual international conference with the remit of exchanging information on a full range of magnetic resonance techniques including NMR, EPR, MRI and related techniques. The conferences cover applications in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, material sciences and engineering with special emphasis on new developments. The first International Conference held under the auspices of EUROMAR was the 2006 meeting in York. This had been initially arranged by the NMRDG and the RSC and was chaired by the NMRDG Chairman, Duncan Farrant (of GlaxoSmithKline).