The Convention establishing the Organization was signed at the sixth session of CERN’s provisional Council, held in Paris in the summer of 1953. It was gradually ratified by the twelve founding Member States: Belgium, Denmark, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Yugoslavia. On 29 September 1954, the European Council for Nuclear Research officially comes into being. The provisional CERN Council is dissolved, but the acronym remains.