The current phase of the GPM programme has now culminated in the GPM1 catalogue
for a sample of 
stars. The GPM1 originates
directly from
the data reduction of independent initial catalogues
containing proper motions
referred to galaxies. It may be expected that by combining stars into a
compiled catalogue the accuracy of the absolute proper motions will be
improved with regard to both random and systematic errors. The first
application of the catalogue is the study of rotation of the FK5 system, as
reported here. It has been based on a comparison with the PPM and ACRS
proper motions. The investigation of proper motion differences PPM-GPM1
and ACRS-GPM1 has shown that the residual rotation of the FK5 system is
less than 2 mas/yr. Thus it should be noted that the data from the GPM1 may
be used for transferring the 
proper motions to an absolute
reference
frame. At present the final GPM catalogue is in preparation. It will include
proper motions of over 60000 stars, covering the B-magnitude range
.
Acknowledgements
A long term astrometric programme of such kind as GPM involves several
generations of astronomers. To all of them we give our deepest
acknowledgement and profound thanks. The authors acknowledge support provided
by grant from the ESO. We should like to thank all collaborators
participating in programme ``
extragalactic link by
photographic
astrometry". Our particular thanks we express to U. Bastian, S. Roeser, C. Turon
and V. Kislyuk for fruitful discussion of the manuscript.