pp-eu:board-meeting08

Minutes

Meeting 7 of the 8th PPEU board 16.10.2023, 18:30 CEST/16:30 UTC Meeting is remote

Members of the Board
C: Mikuláš Peksa
VC: Cédric Levieux
VC: Veronika Murzynová
TR: Alessandro Ciofini
BM: Elísabet Ólafsdóttir
BM: Florian Roussel
BM: Jan Mareš
BM: Mia Utz
BM: Petra Kovačec

Standing invitations
Mattias Bjärnemalm, Pirate Parties Network Officer

Meeting opened at: 18:15
Meeting chaired by: Petra
Secretary for this meeting: Alessandro
Recording: https://owncloud.ag-technik.de/s/ZmJY3HXDLoMM49E
Pad: https://etherpad.pp-international.net/p/Board8Meeting7
RoP: https://wiki.ppeu.net/doku.php?id=documents:rop2021

Participants: VC: Cédric Levieux
TR: Alessandro Ciofini
BM: Florian Roussel
BM: Mia Utz
BM: Petra Kovačec
BM: Jan Mareš
BM: Elísabet Ólafsdóttir (joined at 18:50 CEST)

Excused:
Mattias Bjärnemalm, Pirate Parties Network Officer
C: Mikulaš Peksa
VC: Veronika Murzynová

Not excused:

Guests:
Maija Raudaskoski, Pirate Parties network intern / YPE
Cal (Pirati)
Petr Kocourek (PP-CZ)
Bastian (PP-DE)

Agenda:

0. Formalities

0.1 Election of meeting chair
0.2 Election of meeting Secretary
0.3. Approval of the agenda
0.4. Approval of the minutes of the last meeting: https://wiki.ppeu.net/doku.php?id=pp-eu:board-meeting08_06
0.5 Confirmation of any decisions taken in between meetings
0.6 Written reports

1. Decisions without discussions 1.1 Time and place for next board meeting
1.2 Add Maija Raudaskoski, Pirate Parties Network Intern, to standing invitations to the board meetings and channels
1.3 Delegating the LBR registry information update to Maija
1.4 Admin rights of mab and Maija on the PPEU Wiki
1.5 Merger of the current PPEU mailinglists

2. Decisions with discussions 2.1 Updating the current PPEU webpage
2.2 Delegating responsibility for website overhaul
2.3 Appoint someone responsible fore the December Council meeting
2.4 Agenda for the December Council meeting
2.5 Adopting new Rules of Procedure for the Board
2.6 Board use of Mattermost

3. Discussions without decisions 3.1 Update on CEEP/CPS ratification
3.2 January Council meeting
3.3 Regular share of visitor quota for YPE

4. Any other business 4.1 Assess tasks in the backlog (Done, Add, Modify, Cancel, Assign)
4.2 German Bank Account updates

Discussions in bold cursive are priority discussions and can, if needed, be discussed before point 1 of the agenda

The meeting is scheduled for a maximum of 60 minutes. It can be extended by consensus

Minutes:

0. Formalities 0.1 Election of meeting chair The meeting elected Petra as meeting chair
0.2 Election of meeting Secretary The meeting elected Alessandro as meeting secretary and agreed that we would work collectively on the minutes in the pad
Yes: Florian, Mia, Alessandro, Petra, Cedric
No:
Abstain:

0.3. Approval of the agenda: Yes: Florian, Alessandro, Cédric, Petra, Jan, Mia
No:
Abstain:

0.4. Approval of the minutes of the last meetings Yes: Florian, Cédric, Petra
No:
Abstain:Alessandro, Jan, Mia,

0.5 Confirmation of any decisions taken in between meetings Any decisions taken by email, in mattermost or Discourse, or by any other means shall be listed below, including time and place for the decision. They shall be confirmed by a vote of the Board.
N/A

0.6 Written reports Any written reports or other updates that has been submitted before the start of the meeting shall be added here. Verbal reports given during the meeting go under 4.0 (AOB).

Florian / Emerodh : I am somewhat stalled in my tasks due to a lack of headspace. Personnal objectives and internal french pirate work is keeping me very busy. I am still available to answer questions, give directions if needed and simple follow-ups (it's pretty much what I've been doing overall since the summer). I've been using the mattermost board to keep track of the tasks.

1. Decisions without discussions 1.1 Time and place for next board meeting
Proposal: November 20th 18:30-19:30

Yes: Florian, Cedric, Petra, Mia, Alessandro
No: Jan
Abstain:

1.2 Add Maija Raudaskoski, Pirate Parties Network Intern, to standing invitations to the board meetings and channels

Background: Maija Raudaskoski has recently started an internship with the Greens/EFA Group to assist Mab in his role as Pirate Parties Network Officer. To be able to do this to the fullest she will need to be added to the list of standing invitations as well as all relevant communications channels.

Proposal: invite Maija Raudaskoski to join, for the duration of her internship with the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament, the following:

1) the mattermost channels used by the PPEU Board, 2) the list of standing invitations for board meetings, 3) the board mailing list

Yes: Florian, Cedric, Alessandro, Mia, Jan, Petra
No:
Abstain:

1.3 Delegating the LBR information update to Maija Background: Maija Raudaskoski has, in her role as Secretary General for YPE, been updating the information for that organisation in the LBR registry, and has offered to do the same for PPEU.

Proposal: the board mandates Maija Raudaskoski to contact the LBR registry on behalf of the organisation, and delegates to her the task of making sure that all relevant information is updated with the Luxembourgish authorities.

Yes: Florian, Cedric, Jan, Petra, Mia, Alessandro
No:
Abstain:

1.4 Admin rights of mab and Maija on the PPEU Wiki Background: The wiki needs to be better maintained and updated, and Mab and Maija have offered to help with this. To be able to do this properly they will need admin rights for the wiki.

Proposal: The board instructs Bastian to grant Mattias Bjärnemalm and Maija Raudaskoski admin rights for the PPEU Wiki.

Yes: Florian, Cedric, Jan, Alessandro, Mia, Petra
No:
Abstain:

1.5 Merger of the current PPEU mailinglists Background: As discussed at the last board meeting, the organisation has a multitude of mailinglists, most of which haven't seen any traffic in years. To streamline communication these can all be merged into one mailinglist.
Proposal: the board instructs Mab to merge all mailinglists he deems unneccessary to keep into the main PPEU mailinglist. Caution shall be taken to ensure this is done in a GDPR compliant way.

Yes: Florian, Jan, Petra, Alessandro, Mia
No:
Abstain: Cedric

2. Decisions with discussions 2.1 Updating the current PPEU webpage Background: There is a need to ensure that the PPEU website is properly maintained and updated with relevant information. Until there's a volonteer for this task we will need to ensure that someone does it, to a satisfactory level.
Proposal: the board instructs Mab to ensure that the website of the organisation is properly updated and maintained.

Yes: Florian, Cedric, Petra, Mia, Alessandro, Elisabeth, Jan
No:
Abstain:

2.2 Delegating responsibility for website overhaul Background: As previously discussed, in addition from the task of maintaining and updating the current webpage, it would be really useful to do a full overhaul of the entire website. Elisabet, who has previously signalled an interest in leading this project has flagged that she doesn't have the time to lead the project, but would be happy to assist with input to the project.
Proposal: the board mandates Mab to set up a task force for the website overhaul, with the task of creating a new website, to be approved by the board.

Yes: Florian, Cedric, Alessandro, Mia, Petra, Elísabet, Jan
No:
Abstain:

2.3 Appoint someone responsible for the December Council meeting Background: As We have scheduled our 14th Council meeting to be held online on December 16th this year, we need to start the preparations. Including preparing the formal invitation, that shall be sent out no later than November 16th.

Proposal: The board appoints Elísabet to be responsible for the preparations of the December Council meeting, including drafting the formal invitation email, and to come up with a proposal for the next board meeting for which tool(s) should be used for the Council's online meeting.
Yes: Florian, Alessandro, Cedric, Petra, Mia, Jan
No:
Abstain:

2.4 Agenda for the December Council meeting
Background: The board needs to agree on the agenda for the Council meeting in December. Previously it has been decided that the following points should be on the agenda;
1) annual accounts for 2023,
2) budget for 2024,
3) discharge of the 2023 board. The purpose with putting it on the agenda for this meeting was to try to comply with article 21 of the Statutes (https://european-pirateparty.eu/statutes/). However, it has been pointed out to us that voting on Annual Accounts and Discharge before the very last day of the financial year could be problematic, so to address this we could split the issues, keeping the 2024 budget on the agenda, but postponing the annual accounts and discharge to the January meeting. To be able to provide enough information to allow the Council to make an informed decision on the budget we could replace them with a financial report by the treasurer, in line with art 19(4) of the statutes.

Proposal: the board adopts the following draft agenda for the 14th Council meeting

Draft Agenda 1. Meeting administration
a) Opening of the meeting and registration of delegates
b) Welcoming remarks from the European Pirate Party chair
c) Election of meeting chairs and minute takers
d) Approval of the agenda

2. Decisions and discussions
a) Update on the ratification of the Common European Election Program (CEEP) the Common Pirate Strategy (CPS) for the 2024 European Elections
b) Discussion on the 2024 European Parliament Elections

3. Finances and discharge
a) Report on the 2023 Accounts
b) Approval of the 2024 Budget

4. Closing of the meeting
a) AOB
b) Final greetings

Yes: Alessandro, Cedric, Florian, Mia, Petra, Elísabet
No:
Abstain:

2.5 Adopting new Rules of Procedure for the Board Background: Florian has been working on new Rules of Procedure for the Board. The proposal can be found here:
https://discourse.european-pirateparty.eu/t/8th-board-rules-of-procedure-draft/390 .

Mab has added some last minutes comments in the Discourse thread, that might be worth looking at.

Proposal: the board adopts the rules of procedure presented in this link:
https://discourse.european-pirateparty.eu/t/8th-board-rules-of-procedure-draft/390 .

Yes: Florian, Cedric, Alessandro, Petra, Mia
No:
Abstain:

2.6 Board use of Mattermost Should the board use the Board Pannel on Mattermost instead of Trello?

Yes: Alessandro, Florian, Cedric, Petra, Jan, Elísabet
No:
Abstain:

Should the board use the separate meeting channel, created by Elisabet, for meeting related discussions, to separate them from other board discussions?

Yes: Elísabet
No: Florian
Abstain: Alessandro, Cedric, Mia, Petra

3. Discussions without decisions 3.1 Update on CEEP/CPS ratification Ref: https://discourse.european-pirateparty.eu/t/ceep-cps-ratification-process-tracking/528

Jan: Czech Pirates had a meeting today regarding CEEP/CPS. The situation is a bit complicated because there are willing to change a lot of things but now it's too late to contribute to the CEEP

Alessandro: in Italy, Pirati.io already ratified everything

Mia: PP-DE will have the General Assembly Dec. 2nd and it should be ratified

PP-SI will ratify everything by the end of December

Maija: now I'm helping Mab to assist PPEU, including CEEP/CPS. Also she is introducing herself to the whole board

3.2 January Council meeting We need to start plan the meeting. We have a tentative ok from Luxembourg to organize it there. We will need to reach out to them to confirm.

3.3 Regulate share of visitor quota for YPE Maija : My mistake, I didn't expect that this point would be up so I didn't get in touch with YPE for a proper presentation. Here is what I can say for now: as YPE board, we think it would be reasonable to reserve to YPE a certain number of spots in order to have visitors sponsored group.

Something like 10-30 spots per year, either from one MEP or split between several.

4. Any other business 4.1 Assess tasks in the backlog (Done, Add, Modify, Pause, Cancel, Assign) Suggested backlog items (from https://wiki.ppeu.net/doku.php?id=pp-eu:board-meeting08_01)

Phase 1 (High Priority?)
- final schedule for CEEP finalisation - Mia, Veronika (DONE)
- overview and finalisation of CEEP chapters - Mia, Veronika (DONE)
- prepare post-election strategy - Mikuláš, Veronika
- registration of the new Board, Statue change and update the Bank record - Florian (with mab & cadetblue)
- IT assessment (for budget 2023) - Cedric

- budget 2023 - Alessandro, Florian (DONE)

- discharge 2022 - Alessandro, Florian (DONE)

- Update the mailinglists - Cedric

- Assessment of our systems, including our communication channels (twitter, facebook, etc), and list who's having access to those - Cedric

- 8th Board RoP to make room and define asynchronous work + decision making - Florian (DONE)

- Handling of the German Banking Account - Alessandro & Florian (ADDITION)

Phase 2 (Intermediate Priority)

- Create onboarding material - Betan
- create a T-crew (treasurer's crew)- (Alessandro, Florian) (TO DO)
- Update content on the website

Phase 2 (Low Priority?)
- internships internal exchanges and events
- create a pirate parties vademecum (how to organise, campaign, get the media attention, parties logs and history)
- create a R-crew (reform crew: institutionalistion of the structure, i.e. regular council meetings, regular PPEU events)
- get in touch with every European pirate party to get an overview of their status - Veronika Betan - Prepare proposal for a Second Chamber
- Evaluate the quality of the website and decide on an possible upgrade - Betan(DONE)
- Update the wiki
- Reshape of the PPEU Discourse - Florian (ADDITION)
- Overhaul of PPEU's broadcasts - Florian (ADDITION)

4.2 German Bank Account updates Alessandro : Postbank doesn't answer. BaFin (regulator) has been contacted. There is around 75€ of outstanding debt on the account. Former Treasurer claims he doesn't have access anymore since we tried to contact the bank by our own means and through Falk (lawyer). He provided a list of the movements on the account.

Florian : did some digging on this matter in the organization's documents. Here is what came out of it :

The 3rd Board treasurer is Sebastian Krone.
(3rd board) - 21/10/2018 - Proposal to open a post bank account (no decision visibly taken) https://wiki.ppeu.net/doku.php?id=ppeu:boardmeeting12

(3rd board ) - 12/11/2018- Less than a month after that the account is setup https://wiki.ppeu.net/doku.php?id=ppeu:boardmeeting13
(4th Council Meeting) - 01 and 02/12/2018 - mention of the German banking account as a tool to collect donations from Germans who want to protect their identity. https://wiki.ppeu.net/doku.php?id=4th_council_meeting_2017:minutes

The 4th Board treasurer is Peter Freitag.

The reading of the 4th board minutes shows they interracted only about the old Belgian account and the transfer to FIO Bank, no mention of the German banking account. Was the Treasurer aware of its existence ?

(5th Council Meeting ) - 02 and 03/11/2019 - it is impossible to access the minutes (dead link) and have a look at the board report. https://wiki.ppeu.net/doku.php?id=5th_council_meeting_2019

The 5th board Treasurer is Alessandro Ciofini.
(5th board) - 17/11/2019 - talks about closing the account in its first meeting https://wiki.ppeu.net/doku.php?id=pp-eu:board-meeting17-11-19

(5th Board) - 01/12/2019 - talks about a board resolution to close the German account https://wiki.ppeu.net/doku.php?id=pp-eu:board-meeting01-12-19

(5th Board) - 14/12/2019 - Formal resolution voted by the board to request the closure of the account by Sebastian Krone https://wiki.ppeu.net/doku.php?id=pp-eu:board-meeting14-12-19

(5th Board) - 12/01/2020 - The account can't be closed due to outstanding debt, Mikulasz says he will cover it and then the account will be closed https://wiki.ppeu.net/doku.php?id=pp-eu:board-meeting12-01-20

No other mention of the German banking account in the next meeting minutes, it appears the 5th board considered the matter solved.

(7th Council Meeting) - 28/11/2020 - the board report is not available and should have been added as a pdf in the wiki as stated in the minutes. https://wiki.ppeu.net/doku.php?id=7th_council_meeting_2020:minutes_day1

The 6th Board Treasurer is Sebastian Krone.

The 6th Board never mentions the German bank account in its minutes.

The 7th Board Treasurer is Alessandro Ciofini.

The 7th Board was made aware that the German account is still alive because it received a contract update by postal mail at the organisation's seat.

As of now, the german banking account is not mentionned in the banking section of the wiki.

The German account has been operating the whole time and its controler was Sebastian Krone. It is still the case as of now ?

tl;dr : The account was opened in late 2018 by Sebastian Krone in what seems like a personal initiative. The following treasurer may have not been aware of its existence. Impossible to verify if it was mentionned in board reports back then. The next board and treasurer (Alessandro) acted to close the account, hit a roadblock, solved it and trusted that the issue was resolved. The next board whose Treasurer was Sebastian Krone didn't mention the account in its work (although it appears the treasurer was still in control of it after is was supposedly closed). The next board whose treasurer is Alessandro learns through a contract change that the account is still operating.

tl;dr:
Bastian's comment:

As I have communicated several times, this are fake news.
The bank account was officially opened by me for the PPEU. Mikulas and I have paid the cost of the account for five years, because it was important to remain capable of acting in the event that Fiobank blocks the Fiobank account, because it has not succeeded since 2018 to register the changes in the commercial register in Luxembourg. Legally, Fiobank should have acted long ago. It is a scandal that now it is pretended that I have acted illegally. Through the intervention of at least one member of the Board, Postbank is currently not accepting money to balance the account.

Now I also have to deal with a lawyer from the PPEU, this is really an impertinence. “Everyone” knows very well, so there is no need for any “investigations” with the aim to discredit me. Shame on you!

Alessandro : Requests a formal resolution by the board to ask the previous Tresurer (Sebastian Krone) to close the account, having the original full banking logs (communicated to the Treasurer / Board) and approve the payment of outstanding fees (74,95€ at the moment, from the 100 € approved 2023 budget)

Yes: Florian, Alessandro, Petra, Jan, Mia
No:
Abstain: Cedric

Meeting closed at: 20:05 CE(S)T
Next meeting: November 20th 18:30-19:30 CE(S)T