The 17th Symposium on Emergency Medicine and Acute Cardiology – ‚Charité meets BeNeLux‘ – will address the changing role of emergency medicine in Europe. Having been recognized as a medical specialty in most European countries, emergency medicine is evolving beyond excluding serious diseases and directing patients to other specialties, towards mastering all acute health situations, initiating advanced medical therapies, and caring for complications arising from new medications, devices, and ambulatory interventions and surgery. Additionally, emergency departments care for all kinds of special health situations, including psychosocial emergencies and mental dysregulation. Emergency departments worldwide are facing increasing patient numbers, so evolving technologies, highly standardised processes and well-trained, specialised staff are required to deliver high-quality emergency care. Despite that physicians and nurses of EDs often feel like a team without name, working in challenging conditions under high pressure and at high risk of moral injury and burn-out. We will discuss these topics from an international European perspective with a faculty of high-ranking experts from Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.