1. Networks ∙ Services ∙ People www.geant.org Marko Bonač GÉANT General Assembly GÉANT Voting Working Group Recommendations Porto, 18 June 2015

2. Networks ∙ Services ∙ People www.geant.org After a discussion about voting, the GA in Vienna on 12 March 2015 asked the Board to set up a Working Group in order to develop a voting scheme and propose revisions of the Articles if necessary. The Board asked for volunteers and then appointed the following members: Marko Bonač (chair), Claudia Battista, Alberto Pérez, Jeremy Sharp, Robert Sultana and Raimundas Tuminauskas Staff support: Bert van Pinxteren Senior Management team sponsor: Bob Day Outcome: paper GA(15)017 The GA is asked to discuss the recommendations made by the Working Group and to approve the recommendations as contained in section 8 of document GA(15)017. This would lead to final proposals for amending the Articles and the Bylaws for the next GA meeting 2 Voting System Working Group

3. Networks ∙ Services ∙ People www.geant.org Protection for smaller NRENs Avoiding risk of paralysis Concrete implementation of Article 14.6 (votes should be proportional both to economic weight of the state represented and to the financial commitment made by the member) When to use a special resolution Relationship between Consortium and Association membership Electronic voting “Teckal“ requirements Transparency and ease of use 3 Voting Working Group recommendations re:

4. Networks ∙ Services ∙ People www.geant.org 4 Quorum and voting according to the Articles Article 15.6: Any blank vote/abstention in voting shall be considered not to be cast.

5. Networks ∙ Services ∙ People www.geant.org 5 WG proposal to modify the Articles in order to protect smaller NRENs Article 15.6: Any blank vote/abstention in voting shall be considered not to be cast*. *Some WG members would like to change this, majority of WG thinks that it should be kept to prevent blockade in decision making

6. Networks ∙ Services ∙ People www.geant.org Article 14.6 specifies that the number of votes should be “proportional both to the present economic weight of the state represented … and to the financial commitment made by the member to the sharing of costs of services delivered by the Association”. The proposal is: Express the economic weight of a country as a percentage of the economic weight of all member countries. (We propose to use GNI). Express the financial commitment as a percentage of the total financial contributions by an NREN. Take the average of both percentages as the basis for allocating the number of votes. There is both a maximum number of votes that any member can receive (100) and a minimum (10). Votes are divided in a linear way between those two values. 6 System for allocating votes

7. Networks ∙ Services ∙ People www.geant.org Proposal is: To begin with the new allocation of votes on 1 January 2016 The number of votes for the year 2016 is calculated from: GNI (gross national income) in 2014 Total NREN’s net contributions to GÉANT Association in 2015 If a member joins or leaves the Association the votes of other members stay the same for the remainder of the year The same for next years. E.g. The number of votes in 2017 is calculated from: GNI in 2015 Total NREN’s net contributions to GÉANT Association in 2016 Approximate number of votes is calculated from not up-to-date data in the next table (the final voting allocation will be similar) 7 System for allocating votes (cont.)

8. Networks ∙ Services ∙ People www.geant.org 8

9. Networks ∙ Services ∙ People www.geant.org An organization can be a member of the Association without being a partner to the CA (Currently Azerbaijan, for example). The current CA blocks such organizations from voting on Consortium matters. Dutch legal advice is that non-members can not be legally locked out of a vote involving Consortium matters. The advice is to set up separate sections containing only a subset of members. This has to be checked also against UK law. An organization can be a partner to the CA without being a member of the Association (Ukraine ?) Such a partner must accept that the GA may decide without having a vote. Can such an organization buy GÉANT services without a public tender ? We propose that it should be easy for an NREN to join the Association. 9 Relationship between Consortium and Association membership

10. Networks ∙ Services ∙ People www.geant.org The Voting WG recommends adoption of a suitable electronic voting system, ideally (but not necessarily) one that could be used during meetings as well as outside of meetings (as allowed under articles 15.7 and 15.8). Investigation into such a system has started 10 Transparency and ease of use – electronic voting

11. Networks ∙ Services ∙ People www.geant.org GA is asked to decide if a proposal for change of the Articles and relevant bylaws should be prepared following the recommendations about voting as written in GA(15)017 for the next GA. 11 How to proceed ?

12. Networks ∙ Services ∙ People www.geant.org Thank you and any questions Networks ∙ Services ∙ People www.geant.org 12

13. Networks ∙ Services ∙ People www.geant.org The Teckal exemption (also known as the “in-house” exemption) developed through EU case law to provide that contracting authorities may award a contract to an economic entity (i.e. the supplier), without recourse to a regulated procurement procedure, when: the contracting authority exercises control over that economic entity that is similar to that which it exercises over its own departments (known as the “control test”); and the economic entity carries out the essential part of its activities with the contracting authority (known as the “function test”); and there is no private capital in the economic entity. The same rules are in Article 12 of the new Directive 2014/24/EU on public procurement. 13 Voting proposal is in line with “Teckal“ exemption