Bonum Certa Men Certa

The Tail That Wags the Dog: How an EPO President Virtually Controls the Administrative Council (AC)

Willy (Guillaume) Minnoye's Speech
Source: Willy (Guillaume) Minnoye's Speech



Summary: A reminder of the weird procedures for selecting and appointing highly paid staff at the EPO, courtesy of transparency in the form of meeting minutes

THE EXISTING state of affairs at the EPO is simply not sustainable. Nearly half of all employees are brave enough (in the face of systematic retaliation from management) to go out and protest in front of their employer, breaking if not smashing recent records. The staff has very legitimate reasons to be concerned and more so upset, even angry.



“Meeting in restricted composition, without the observers and the staff and Office representatives (apart from the President and the Vice-President DG 3), the Council unanimously decided to make the following appointments...”
      --Summary of AC decisions
Quite a while back we showed how the EPO and the Administrative Council (AC) basically denied there was an issue when obviously there were many issues. Not only did they declare the Topić affair a non-issue two years before Topić lost a court case in Croatia but they also appointed people to positions of power without much transparency, and definitely not accountability. To quote their June 2013 report (Summary of Decisions) [PDF]: "16. Meeting in restricted composition, without the observers and the staff and Office representatives (apart from the President and the Vice-President DG 3), the Council unanimously decided to make the following appointments...

Notice how small a presence in the room. Things have not exactly improved since then. Two years later a similarly formatted (even similar wording, as if there's a template/formula, or gross text reuse) shows that chairman Kongstad (of the AC) is acting more like a courier of Battistelli, not like a person who is supposed to oversee Battistelli. Here is extract from the draft minutes of the June 2015 Council concerning the extension of VP1's and VP5's contract until 31 December 2018: "Meeting in restricted composition, without the observers and the staff and Office representatives (apart from the President), the Council unanimously decided to extend the contract of Guillaume Minnoye (BE) as vice-president in charge of Directorate General 1 until 31 December 2018. The chairman was mandated to negotiate the terms of this extension, in co-ordination with the President, and to sign the new contract on behalf of the Administrative Council"

Got that? Kongstad is "mandated to negotiate" and then "sign the new contract on behalf of the Administrative Council". In "co-ordination with" Battistelli, of course! No wonder people like Bergot rose to power so magically [1, 2, 3, 4] and with a supposed (without independent eyewitnesses) unanimous vote...

Welcome to the family business.

"If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots."

--Napoleon Bonaparte



Recent Techrights' Posts

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has Un-cancelled the Best People, Just in Time for the Big 4-0
Mr. Oliva should have been there all along (since 2019)
Most "Modern" Technology Makes You Slower and Dumber
Because proprietary software makes you worse off
"What Comes After Free Software?" Wrongly Insinuates We've Reached the Goal (Prison is Not the Goal)
The oil tycoons use similar tactics against environmentalists, giving them fake "wins"
Making More Work Space
I learned the hard way that less is more in circumstances where more means distraction
MAHA is a Lie, Public Officials Never Valued Citizens' Health (They Still Value Private Businesses, Their Sponsors)
Reject demagogues
New Techrights Turns 2
Today starts the third year of the SSG-based Techrights
What Scares Them the Most is Independent News Sites That They Cannot Control and Censor
Wikileaks was a good example of this
If You Don't Control Your Online Platform, Then Someone Else is Controlling You
be (or become) independent
 
Links 23/09/2025: Japan Limits Uses of Skinnerboxes ('Smartphones') With Toxic "Apps", Fentanylware (TikTok) Tapped by "MAGAts"
Links for the day
Brett Wilson LLP Has Just Been Sued (by Their Own Clients!)
Vladimir and Alla Yanpolsky sued Brett Wilson LLP in BL-2025-001167 at the end of last week
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part II - UK SLAPPs for Americans, SLAPPs for Profit
Brett Wilson LLP has a track record of this kind
Mayday: Optus emergency calling crisis
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 23/09/2025: Massive Data Breach, Slop Versus Productivity, and Vista 11 Update Breaks Things Again
Links for the day
Code of Censorship
Extortion is peace
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has a New Press Kit for the Weekend After Next Weekend (40th Anniversary)
miles better than social [sic] media [sic] quips, moderated by narcissists and oil tycoons.
Microsoft Had Two Waves of Mass Layoffs This Month (That We Know of) and It'll Get Worse for Microsoft Soon
Will the axe fall again by month's end?
Gemini Links 23/09/2025: Happy Equinox, Photronic Arts, and Perception Cognition
Links for the day
Lessons We've Learned After 17 Years of American Hosting
GAFAM is "all-in" with the "Trump agenda"
Back to Normal Now, We Plan to Do More In-Depth Series (or Multi-part Stories)
Articles (or series thereof) that contain philosophy are important to us
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 22, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 22, 2025
Microsoft Media is Panicking Amid Mass Layoffs Every Month, H-1B Fees, and "Seattle’s Tech Scene in Trouble"
In "late stage Microsoft", copyleft becomes proprietary
The Next Wave of IBM/Red Hat Layoffs Being Discussed Already
Red Hat is sort of disappearing the way Tivoli did
Oracle Started This Year With Slop. Then It Stopped.
Passing fads are like this
Distros That Run on PCs Made 20 Years Ago and Don't Use Systemd
Betas for now
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has a Policy on Racism and Sexism
In then future we'll show the misogyny and racial slurs
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part I - Abusing British Women on Behalf of American Men Who Abuse American Women
Transparency is important to us, so we've decided to make this series
Slopwatch: Google News and the Evident Slopfarm Infestation
This is what people get about Linux when they query Google for Linux
Links 22/09/2025: Murdochs Might Join Fentanylware (TikTok) 'Investors' (Masters), United Kingdom Recognises Palestinian Statehood
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Esperanto Music History and Apps For Android
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: More American 'Censorship' (Retaliation for Journalism), Cheeto "Might Be Losing His Race Against Time"
Links for the day
The Blob Slop
Give me more words, give me some text
The 50-Pound Note Experiment and the "War on Cash"
Britain is actually seeing a rebound in cash payments, and it's not a temporary phenomenon
Slopwatch: Blaming the Victims for Microsoft's Failures and Plagiarising Phoronix
That's what Google has been reduced to: slop and slopfarms
Links 22/09/2025: Breaches, Windows TCO, and Arrests
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Rabbit Hole and DeGoogling Fairphone
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: Russian War Planes Invade NATO Airspace While Dihydroxyacetone Man Escalates Attack on Free Speech Because of Critics
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 21, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, September 21, 2025
Links 21/09/2025: "Hey Hi" (Hype) Under Fire, Fakes Identified; Tesla Burns Family
Links for the day
Google's Software is Malware and Malware in Mobile Devices
Originally posted by Rob Musial
Links 20/09/2025: Hegemony Coming to a Close, Luigi Mangione Ruled Not Terrorist
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/09/2025: "Charlie Kirk Was a Hateful Piece of Shit" and Slop Code Attempted by Microsofter
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 20, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, September 20, 2025