In the wake of the numerous emails spreading confusion, we felt obliged to respond, although we would have preferred avoiding a flood of trade union messages.

If you tuned in to the webstream of the staff committee meeting on Tuesday you will have witnessed a sorry spectacle. From the scheduled kick-off at 11 a.m…. technical difficulties right up to 12:30 p.m.

Then at 12:48, we had our first attempt at voting – to elect the next staff committee chair (for a three-year term). Result: 29 votes cast; 14 for each candidate. That’s right! Do the maths: 14+14 = 29 according to the oldest member from ETHOS-Europe (chairing the meeting) and, again according to her, no problem with the voting system whatsoever!

Not to mention a few more dodgy aspects of the whole charade:

• The special procedure for the constituent meeting because of CoVid needed the agreement of all 29 members to be valid. However, during the meeting, this just boiled down to a simple agreement between those members present;
• Member could vote even when a large number of other elected members were not present in the room, instead of voting by proxy as expressly established for secret votes by the Committee’s Rules of Procedures;
• The quorum included members connected by Visio (the rules expressly stipulate physical presence for the constituent meeting).

The chair orchestrated this suspect procedure to favour the election as chair of – surprise, surprise! – A member of her own electoral list. Trade union part of this were Etos-Europe, Plural list and U4U.

The meeting has been suspended by the Institution. The Jusrisconsult asked the two tellers to leave the meeting. The procedure will be checked and the meeting may be annulled.