As in other laboratory diagnostic fields, the main goal of external quality assessment (EQA) in haematology is to achieve the lowest possible interlaboratory variation for haematological parameters since those parameters are mainly used for monitoring purposes and the differences between two patient results should not be jeopardized by analytical variation between different cell counting principles. Commercial control materials made for EQA purposes are, mostly, analyser specific. Specificity comes out of striving to achieve long term stability of the control material. Manufactures use different approaches to resolve stability issues. Usually, controls are made of preserved and stabilised fresh human blood and/or by addition of surrogate materials (avian, porcine, bovine etc. cells) in leucocytes and platelets deprived blood. Control materials prepared in such way result with morphologically altered red blood cells causing problems in cell counting when obtained by different analysers. Consequently, comparability of the results could be threatened. The best, i.e. commutable control material for interlaboratory comparison in haematology is the fresh blood sample. Despite of its indisputable advantages, that kind of sample has numerous disadvantages which EQA providers must overcome if want fresh blood sample serve as a control material in their haematology scheme. The main reason not using fresh human blood for EQA in haematology is short stability and limited blood volume which can be obtained from donor. To overcome stability problems every EQA provider uses different receipt. The most convenient solution is minimal preservation of blood cells in order to keep the morphological characteristics of the cells. However, maximum stability still could not be longer than a few days. CROQALM successfully provided 3 exercises in haematology scheme using human fresh blood as a control sample. Since haematology scheme has nearly 180 participants, blood dose from single donor is enough to ensure that every laboratory obtains sufficient volume for analysis. Stability issues are overcame by postal delivery within 48 hours.