Bonum Certa Men Certa

The 168th Meeting of the EPO Administrative Council as a Test of the EPO's Oversight Mechanisms

Press the image below for more

EPO voting datasheet
Gallery of 'rogues' (2013) compared to 2021 as image | Complete HTML version of the same (the above image is not complete but merely a preview)



Summary: The Administrative Council of the European Patent Organisation is having its 168th meeting this Wednesday and we expect no expression of remorse for illegally crushing EPO staff (almost 7,000 individuals and their families) for nearly a decade; some of the culprits (10 of them to be precise) are still their nation's public face

As the EPO's Administrative Council gets ready for its 168th meeting this Wednesday - 13 October 2021 - it seems like a good idea to compare the current composition of the Council to that during the 136th meeting in June 2013 when Benoît Battistelli's "Strike Regulations" were adopted.



Since then many of the heads of delegation have changed. However, ten delegations are still headed by the same person as in June 2013:

- Czech Republic: Josef KRATOCHVÍL - Croatia: Ljiljana KUTEROVAC - Iceland: Borghildur ERLINGSDÓTTIR - Ireland: Gerard BARRETT - Malta: Godwin WARR - Monaco: Jean-Pierre SANTOS - San Marino: Silvia ROSSI - Turkey: Habip ASAN - Belgium; Jérôme DEBRULLE - Italy: Mauro MASI

"The current governance crisis at the EPO - triggered by the recent ILOAT judgments which struck down the "Strike Regulations" - shows how important it is to expose the workings of the Administrative Council to public scrutiny."Two of those delegations - namely Belgium and Italy - abstained from endorsing Battistelli's "Strike Regulations". The other eight delegations voted in favour.

There are two further delegations where the previous head of delegation has been replaced by the person who was their deputy in June 2013.

- Finland: Antti RIIVARI (successor to Rauni HAGMAN) - Estonia: Margus VIHER (successor to Matti PÄTS)

Both the Finnish and Estonian delegations voted in favour of Battistelli's "Strike Regulations".

The current governance crisis at the EPO - triggered by the recent ILOAT judgments which struck down the "Strike Regulations" - shows how important it is to expose the workings of the Administrative Council to public scrutiny.

"When exercising its legislative powers, the Council is supposed to respect the primary law of the EPC as well as international legal norms to which its contracting states subscribe."The Administrative Council is the governing body of the organisation EPO which has been entrusted with a limited set of legislative powers. In particular, it can make amendments to the EPO's internal employment law, codified in the "EPO Service Regulations".

When exercising its legislative powers, the Council is supposed to respect the primary law of the EPC as well as international legal norms to which its contracting states subscribe.

However, in contrast to an elected parliamentary legislative body, the EPO's Administrative Council is not subject to any meaningful form of public accountability if it should happen to abuse its legislative powers. It is only subject to very weak judicial oversight by the ILOAT.

As recently seen in the case of Battistelli's "Strike Regulations", it has taken eight years to strike down a flawed legislative measure which breached the fundamental rights of EPO staff.

It now remains to be seen how the Council in its current composition is going to react to the EPO's governance crisis at its upcoming 168th meeting.

"It now remains to be seen how the Council in its current composition is going to react to the EPO's governance crisis at its upcoming 168th meeting."It can be safely assumed that Team Campinos - which appears to be in complete denial about the implications of the recent ILOAT judgments - is doing its best to feed the Council delegates a sugar-coated narrative, in the hope that they will fail to realise the seriousness of the situation.

A lot will depend on whether the Council delegates are capable of doing their own homework and thinking for themselves, or whether they just prefer to "go with the flow" and swallow the snake-oil being spoon-fed to them by António Campinos and his cronies.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Plagiarism, Fake Articles, and FUD About Linux
not a day goes by without Google News feeding FUD from slopfarms
Gemini Links 01/10/2025: Chat Control and End of Life
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: Long Covid Risk Reiterated, "Bitcoin Queen" Caught
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: EA $55 Billion Deal is Debt and Slop "Raises Vishing Risks"
Links for the day
Bluewashing at Red Hat Means Redundancies
The man who sold Red Hat to IBM meanwhile became a Microsoft Mono booster
After Killing OpenSource.com, IBM ('Red Hat') and OSI Told Us OpenSource.net Would Replace It (But That Didn't Happen)
Now it's time to move on, perhaps tarnishing the "Open Source" label some more (for whatever sponsor wants this)
Linux is Not a Community Project, It's a Wall Street Product
The core goal should be freedom
Bad Actors Abusing the Free Software Community, Vandalising It Using Rogue Politics and Old Tactics
Oil giants have long attempted to do this; now, the digital equivalent of Big Oil does this in technology
Social Control Media Isn't the Future, The Federation or Fediverse Isn't Growing, People's Accounts Vanish for Good
users' accounts will get deleted, not just become inactive
IBM is Failing, This Helps Show Wall Street is Entirely Detached From Actual Commercial Performance
IBM is unable to grow, it's just constantly shrinking
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 30, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Clerical Aspects of Publishing and Development
In Free software, the management aspects are considerably reduced
Slopwatch: Fake Articles and Google News Promoting "Linux" Spam or Bot-Generated Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
These slopfarms help misplace blame
Third Wave of Microsoft Layoffs in September, This Time Many in Liverpool Affected
Be ready for more waves of layoffs ahead of the so-called "results" in late October
Gemini Links 30/09/2025: Motorcycling in Central Oregon, Protocol Styles and the Flag of Sark
Links for the day
Links 30/09/2025: Death Sentences, Internet Censorship, and Internet Shutdowns
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/09/2025: Social Control Media and ROOPHLOCH
Links for the day
Richard Stallman About to Give More Talks in Europe, Some Confirmed Already
In Göteborg
Links 30/09/2025: CERN in "Have I Been Pwned" and More Windows TCO Blunders
Links for the day
Microsoft Canonical is Selling Mass Surveillance and Back Doors as "Security for Ubuntu"
If you are looking for a GNU/Linux distro to use, just remember that Microsoft has Ubuntu in the bag
Justice for Wildlife
animals cannot speak to humans who hate animals
Cowboys Gonna Be Cowboys (on the Internet, They're Not a New Problem)
Boys will be boys
Cowboys of the "Left" and Cowboys of the "Right"
Don't believe the lie that this is some "leftist" thing
When Codes of Conduct Serve to Protect Criminals From Much-Deserved Scrutiny
CoCs are typically unfit for purpose because enforcement lacks context and suitable understanding of the full background (the "full story")
It Took the Open Source Initiative (OSI) 4+ Years to Address the 'Data Breach' or Data Protection Violation Reported to the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA) in March 2025
We may never know the dialogue or its nature
Even Microsoft's Biggest Boosters (and Media Operatives) Are Turning Against Microsoft
Expect many more layoffs before the fake "results" next month
GNU Was Right 42+ Years Ago
Since then the abusive, user-hostile technology has spread like mushrooms
Old Isn't Always Inadequate
How many gadgets manufactured today (in 2025) will still work in 2075?
The Monkey Business of Rust People
Compatibility won't matter
Almost Half of the FSFE's Money (the Fake 'FSF', Misusing the Brand) Comes From Vodafone
That money always comes with strings, even if they're invisible to most of us
Microsoft Lunduke Spreads Deliberate Lies to Incite Online Mobs
Has he lost his reading comprehension skills?
Our 19th Birthday (in Just Over 5 Weeks From Now)
We meanwhile have ongoing, solid plans to cover patent-related issues when the FSF turns 40
British GNU/Linux Distro FydeOS Tops DistroWatch
That seems like a decent site and decent effort to keep an eye on
We'll Soon Have 75,000 GemText Pages
avoid many perils of today's Web
Google Used Free Software to Build a Monopoly. Now Google Kicks Free Software to the Curb
The "G" in "Google" does not stand for GNU. It never did. It's just another greedy company.
Gemini Links 30/09/2025: Retro Hardware, Federated Fragmentation, and Nex Server Written in C
Links for the day
4 More Days Till "4 decades, 4 freedoms, 4 all users"
We are now just 4 days away from the rare anniversary
Two Months After Merging to Hide GitHub Losses Microsoft is Doing It Again (This Time Windows)
Merging those two together is not a sign of strength but a tightening of budget
Speculations About the Next Large Wave of IBM/Red Hat Layoffs
the mass layoffs are likely to happen on week 3 or 4 in October
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 29, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 29, 2025