Bonum Certa Men Certa

The General Consultative Committee of the EPO Exposes a Disaster and a Lack of Genuine Dialogue

Video download link | md5sum 0fb9bcc5d05ac5516517f1c160154f6e GCC Report as Dialogue Breaks Down Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0



Summary: The General Consultative Committee (GCC) at the EPO deals with unlawful proposals from António Campinos (he's happy to violate laws, constitutions, protocols, conventions, just like Benoît Battistelli did) and once again the abuses by managers is covered up; it's as if the Office is run by unaccountable gangsters who arrogantly curse at everyone whilst insisting they're the nicest people ever

THE video above deals with this short report [PDF] about a recent meeting at the EPO, whose agenda is better illuminated in several [PDF] key [PDF] opinion documents [PDF] from staff representatives. They show to their constituents that the Office misuses politics to justify cracking down on staff or plundering the staff.



"They show to their constituents that the Office misuses politics to justify cracking down on staff or plundering the staff."One of these opinion documents is very long, but the summary speaks of the Unitary Patent, basically a misguided longtime effort to introduce a kangaroo court (UPC) to authorise European software patents etc. under the guise of "unity" or "unification".

Here is the letter sent to staff:

Report on the GCC meeting of 26 April 2022: The re-election package

Dear colleagues,

As already explained in an earlier publication, the GCC meeting of 26 April was the worst ever experienced under Mr Campinos’ leadership. The CSC members of the GCC requested that the consultation on the agenda items be repeated; and that the official recording of the discussions in the meeting be made available so that staff become aware of how the President chaired this statutory meeting.

On 29 April, the President informed the CSC members that “there are no reasons to repeat the GCC meeting” and he did not address the question of the recording. The reasoned opinions on the documents on the agenda are thus given under protest:
  • Opinion on the document on Professional Mobility (GCC/DOC 06/2022)


  • Opinion on the directive on an in-house supervisory committee for SSP investment management and administration (GCC/DOC 07/2022)


  • Opinion on the decision (GCC/DOC 08/2022) of the President on the entry into force of Circular No. 419 (New Ways of Working).


Undoubtedly, the first document (Professional Mobility) is the one that would most profoundly change the way official EPO duties are assigned to employees, be they EPO staff or national civil servants. In best Battistelli tradition, Mr Campinos has prepared a “package” to be submitted to the Budget and Finance Committee in May 2022 and to the Administrative Council for approval in June 2022 (see CA/32/22 and CA/32/22 Add.1), with various measures more or less closely related to mobility. His re-election will be discussed in the same meeting.

You can read the full report, including some salient points in the “mobility package” here.


Notice the arrogance of Campinos, having cursed at the staff and then rejected transparency (in order to cover up what he had done). He "informed the CSC members that “there are no reasons to repeat the GCC meeting” and he did not address the question of the recording." My personal opinion is that, for their own protection, staff should bring recording devices of their own. They might even wish to disclosure that in advance, citing this example where the Office maintains a monopoly on the recordings -- just like many Police Departments (PDs) in the United States -- so that those recordings can only ever be used as a weapon against the vulnerable/unarmed citizens.

Recent Techrights' Posts

IBM Reduces the Thresholds for Acceptance (and the Salaries)
Are chatbots good enough as IBM staff?
When It Comes to Rust, Keep All the Eyes on the Ball (Technical and Legal Perils, Sustainability Questions)
It's not about security or politics
Social Control Media is Just a Digital Weapon
Social control media is not social and not media
 
Happy Birthday (or Anniversary) to SoylentNews
"Happy Birthday SoylentNews"
Techrights' Architecture
Stability is the main goal
Linux Foundation Continues Falling Off a Cliff in Geminispace
Gemini Protocol will turn 7 this summer
Links 16/02/2026: cURL’s Daniel Stenberg Asserts That Slop is DDoSing Free Software, But Still Uses a Plagiarism and GPL-Violating Blender (Microsoft GitHub)
Links for the day
The Techrights Community Never Needed Money, Only Goodwill
We accomplish things by a track record of suppressed facts
"AboutCode" is a Microsoft Proxy and Microsoft's Acquisition of the OSI Advances Via OSI Moles
presenting direct evidence anybody can verify
They Will Call Smart People "Luddites"
Is society "seeing the light"?
Microsoft Amutable Already Reveals That Its Focus Is Not Linux, It'll Promote "Remote Attestation"
This is basically an attack on Software Freedom, even if they toss around the brand "Linux"
More People in Chad Move to GNU/Linux
Last year we began to see GNU/Linux rising there - a trend which continues this year
Dr. Andy Farnell on How Universities and Culture of Education Got Crushed by "Technofascist Nightmare"
Farnell says he "already soft-quit in [his] mind"
Debt of Broadcom Grew by More Than 50%, Broadcom is Deeper in Debt Than Google
Expect many more cuts
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 15, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, February 15, 2026
Links 15/02/2026: Slop, Politics, and Gemini
Links for the day
Small is Beautiful (in Cascading Style Sheets/Inheritance Rules)
If done correctly, pages can take a tenth of a second to fully load
Microsoft Has Fallen to New Lows in Hong Kong This Year
That Windows "market share" falls there is perhaps expected
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Raised About 1.5 Million Dollars This Winter, Almost 50% More Than in All of 2024 Combined
Verbal advocacy goes a long way
Spread the Word About EPO Strikes and Patent Injustices in Europe
Corruption in Europe is a real thing
The Register MS is Promoting Slop, Promotion Connected to Microsoft (Trying to Replace Judges With Microsoft)
marketing spun as "science"
He Did Not Have Enough Souls
A lot of the subjects we cover here no other site dares touch
"Mix Vale" is a Slopfarm
3 "articles" about "ubuntu"
Links 15/02/2026: Roy Medvedev Dead at 100, Rise of "YouTube Politicians"
Links for the day
Links 15/02/2026: How Alexey Navalny Was Executed by Putin, Erdogan Helping Iran
Links for the day
IBM Fedora Keeps Promoting Slop, Red Hat Has Been Turned Into Chaff and Trash to Help IBM's Stock (With "AI" Storytelling)
Red Hat's Fedora is an old brand (20+ years). It no longer stands for what it meant to people in the Fedora Core days (I was a Fedora user back then).
What IBM Said About 2026 Layoffs and What's Happening in Practice
t'll leave IBM at the very bottom, in due course (customers will notice something profound has changed)
Gemini Links 15/02/2026: "Already Midway February" and Loadbars Remembered
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 14, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, February 14, 2026
Microsoft's Bing Down to 0.5% in Armenia
Microsoft does not want shareholders to see this
Libel by Bots: Unexplored Legal Area?
Liability can be traced back to the operator
Maybe Obvious, But Merits Repeating: A Lot of "Demand" for Slop is Faked, Manufactured, Fabricated by Dark Patterns, Bundling, Media PR (Deception/Hype) Campaigns
Over the past few years many products and services got rebranded as "AI"
xAI and X (Twitter) Live on Borrowed Time, It'll Get a Lot Worse Fast
Being associated with a child porn site formerly known as "Twitter" is odorous to say the least
Microsoft is Lobbying Brussels via Opensource.org and OSI
The new (GAFAM) management at OSI is not serving the OSI's original mission
Will Lockett's Newsletter: Microsoft became Microslop and Windows users are "flocking" to GNU/Linux "to escape the mess"
"Users are fed up and jumping ship from Windows to Mac or Linux. In fact, it appears that Windows has lost 400 million users since 2022!"
Photographic Collections
There are going to be over 100,000 JPEG, PNG, and GIF files by the time we turn 20
Norway Curbs Social Control Media as It Harms Norway's Society
A decrease from 11% to just 1.87% is possible to reason about
Accomplishments of Our Community
Why I enjoy writing in Techrights
Microsoft Invented a Slop CEO ("AI CEO") Because Real Interest in Slop is Waning, So It's Just Faking Its Prominence
It's noise
Google Promoting Slop, Not Journalism
The truth of the matter is, Google is part of this problem and it doesn't seem to care
Another IBM Company (Spawned by IBM) is Hiding the Scale of Layoffs, Just Like Red Hat and Kyndryl
Why is the scale of the layoffs there shrouded in secrecy?
Links 14/02/2026: Financial Woes in Hong Kong and "Hong Kong Journalists Face ‘Precarious’ Future After Jimmy Lai Jailed"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 14/02/2026: Fish Shell and Meta Slash-commands
Links for the day
Links 14/02/2026: "Bias and Toxicity in" Slop, Microsoft's Vista 11 System Update Breaks Systems Again
Links for the day
Links 14/02/2026: "Suppression of Free Speech" and "Climate Change Puts Winter Games on Thin Ice"
Links for the day
EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part I - Getting the Word Out About What the 'Alicante Mafia' Did to Europe's Second-Largest Institution
Can't everyone in the European media agree that letting cokeheads run Europe's second-largest institution is a terrible idea?
Richard Stallman in the United States - Part I - Huge Audience (Offline and Online), 'Cancel Culture' Attempted and Failed
the comeback of Richard Stallman (RMS) in the United States
GitHub Cannot Survive for Much Longer
Microsoft is trying to just hide the debt
Ed Zitron: Microsoft Is A Decaying Empire That Bet The Future On Making In Excess Of $500 Billion In New Revenue Within The Next 4 To 6 Years From AI — And It Hasn’t Made A Dime In Profit Yet
Microsoft bets its future on a bunch of nothing
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, February 13, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, February 13, 2026
Gemini Links 14/02/2026: "Throwback VR Headset" and OFFLFIRSOCH 2026
Links for the day