Stenography Transcript

RIPE NCC General Meeting

October 28, 2026

ONDREJ FILIP: Good afternoon, it's four o'clock, so I don't think we have to wait for anything, and we can start the best part of the RIPE meeting, which is the RIPE NCC general assembly.

My name is Ondrej Filip, I am the Chair of the Executive Board, I am NOG I hope I will be the last Chair of the Executive Board because we would like to change the balance, as, you know, but that will come later.

Let me brief you with some administrative matters. The article 19.3 of the article says that the Chair points the secretary for the General Meeting. So, I appointed Athina Fragkouli, and also I would like to remind you that the General Meeting, draft minutes will be published two working days after the meeting, that's going to be Tuesday, November 3rd, and then you, members, have three weeks to submit a notice of objection to the minutes. The objection can be made using the objection system linked to the draft minutes on the RIPE NCC website.

So the objection system will be available from November 3rd to November 24, 2026.

And unless the Executive Board receives notice of objection signed by at least 100 members within three weeks of publication of the minutes, the draft minutes the draft minutes will be final and binding.

Again, this you can do electronically. Also the voting will be electrically as is the tradition for a few last years.

Also, one reminder about the photographing and taking videos and pictures. Here, we have an official photographer for this General Meeting, so please don't take pictures or videos, there will be plenty of material at the end of the General Meeting.

With that, let me introduce the agenda, it was sent in advance as usual, and it has ten points starting with a number 1, welcome and preliminaries, which is right now, it's me doing that.

Then, my place will be taken by Hans Petter who will deliver the report from the RIPE NCC.

Then I will stand up again and do the report from the Executive Board.

Then again Hans Petter will come to the stage and he will deliver draft RIPE NCC activity plan and budget for the next year, for 2027.

Then Simon‑Jan will join him with the financial update and the RIPE NCC surplus.

Athina will then introduce you the amendments to the Articles of Association, as I mentioned at the opening speech. And that's, you know, the change of the structure, of the Board structure.

Then, Karla will talk about the RIPE NCC panel election and she will continue to the point number 8, and she will introduce to the voting system and how the voting works. And at the end of her point, I will join her and with my beautiful Czech accent I will read you all the resolutions that this General Meeting should pass and then we will interrupt the meeting, we will reconvene on Friday, and I will then in point number 9, announce the resolutions and the election results and that's going to be the end of the General Meeting.

So that's the agenda. It's binding and approved, so, without any delay I ask Hans Petter to start his report from the RIPE NCC.

HANS PETTER HOLEN: Thank you. So, what have the RIPE NCC been up to since last time?

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We have already presented the draft activity plan and budget and reviewing or technical infrastructure in the Services Working Group which is formally a part of the General Meeting, so if you want more details there, please go back and review those.

We are now almost at the end of the last career of the 2022 to 2026 strategic cycle and the report that we will produce at the end of this year will be still aligned with that strategy. And then as I said in my presentation in the Services Working Group, looking forward, we have a new strategy and new strategic objectives.

We have focused specifically on registry accuracy, on stability, security and compliance, data measurements and tool and on resilience. We prioritised registry data accuracy by expanding automation to manage workload. We strengthened service resilience and enhanced recovery planning, prioritised compliance with applicable legislation, minimised effects of political risks to our operations, sustained strong efforts in transparency. We published a trust portal. Ongoing review of the process of the RIR governance document. What used to be ICP‑2. Operated a resilient and defensible security architecture to reduce the risk of cybercrime and prepared and published the 2027‑2031 strategy.

So, registry accuracy.

You may have seen this pie‑chart before. I am happy to report that for the members, we are linking those to business registries, thus seeing that the registration is accurate to a legal entity that exists in the business register. And we do that for 96.4 of the members. So, why not the rest? Well the members, the ones that are missing may either be natural persons or other organisations that do not get the registration number for their government. You can, for instance, look at the international criminal court in the Netherlands, they do not have a could have a number in the business register, although there is a separate is number in the ministry of foreign affairs but that doesn't fit into this business register numbering. So there are some potential for increasing that. But for the sole proprietors in many countries the number they get is similar to their social security number, which is not something that we want to publish in the database.

For end users, however, we have a hundred percent match of those that hold resources. So that's really good.

And this registration number is now public in the RIPE Database, and that makes it possible to verify this accuracy but also in a complete disaster recovery scenario, even if you don't have the person data for contacts and so on, if anyone has a copy of the public registry, it will be possible or easier to recover from that because you can link it to local business registries.

We, the Board, decided to temporary restrict acquisition of additional LIR accounts. This is a temporary measure to stop adding complexity while we assess the impact of the restriction. As you may know, if you have been here for some years, the multiple LIR accounts is something that has been used to get on the waiting list to get additional resources while the policy says that resources are only for new. So, by doing this temporary change, we want to push this discussion to the Address Policy Working Group, please go there tomorrow, if you have opinions on this, then we should adapt the policy to what you would like that to be, rather than having a work around that causes challenges in our back office systems.

So currently 410 members hold 708 additional LIR accounts. So that's 2.1% of the membership. This is kind of a lot of additional complications in our back office system for only 2% of the members.

So, another thing that we have been looking at is the legacy resource holder records and we have contacted 1261 of those, and 546 have responded and 3 hundred have choose to enter into a contractual relationship with the RIPE NCC, which is great because then they have a contract with an RIR that guarantees them uniqueness in the global number resourcing system. If you have legacy space, what contractual guarantees do you have for those numbers not being used by somebody else? It's just the convention that nobody else will use those numbers. So it's really important that we now get these enrolled into the system going forward and all the other RIRs are also working on this.

Multiple LIR accounts, as I mentioned.

This freezing of temporary restricting the ability of members to create additional LIR accounts do not affect LIR accounts that currently exists. That's kind of a separate project to look into that. For several reasons we want to phase out the multiple LIR account situations mainly because it creates a lot of technical and administrative overhead in our back office system, but also confusion and misalignment with the other four RIRs.

This conundrum has two parts: Policy and operations. We are asking the community to discuss whether policy should be changed to allow members to receive more than one v4 allocation from the waiting list, and we're encouraging members to see their if their operational needs can be met in ways other than through having multiple LIR accounts.

And to figure out this, we have done a survey. So we have 100 respondents so far, and 51 of them, half, are using this to manage separate business unit departments in our organisation. 41 already planned to merge, so then that solves itself. 28 is for better maintaining internal access rights to certain resources and services such as RPKI, resource transfers, etc. Well then would I argue that multiple LIR accounts isn't the answer to that. Better access control is the answer. So we need to get those requirements in place, because that would make it possible for you to administer your whole, you know, address space and membership in one place rather than spread across multiple accounts.

Receive additional v4 through the waiting list. So that's a policy discussion.

Accommodate the acquisition of another RIPE NCC member. Well that's a temporary thing. How do we ‑‑ what changes are needed to allow for timely mergers and acquisitions?

And receive additional v6 allocations, which is also a policy matter. And then there are 16 others.

So this is something that we will work on to see what functionality can be put in place to take away some of these reasons for having multiple LIR accounts, and I also talk to people that don't have multiple LIR accounts that really would like to have access rights for RPKI and other things so that would improve their life.

Data, measurements and tools. We presented at the various conferences around this and you can see the ways of now displaying and presenting the rather data that we get in the measurements services, are getting way more advance advanced and we are doing analysis over time and so on. So, please go and read the regional inter connectivity report for central Asia if you are interested in this.

RIPE Atlas, now includes a new path analysis tool. So you can understand how traceroute paths evolves over time. So, by comparing runs side by side highlighting where the paths changed and what kind of change that was.

We have published a new five year strategic document, and then the activity plan that I will be talking about in a bit is then based on this new five year strategy and this strategy was presented in the May meeting and approved in June by the Board.

Then, the charging scheme, 2027, was at the General Meeting in 2026, and the General Meeting voted to continue one LIR, one fee model instead of the category models. And this was a very close vote but that is the scheme we have going forward.

So, what we are planning to look at for next year is the other suggestions that was in the report from the charging scheme task force, and see how we can implement those going forward.

Resilience. The RIR governance document, version 3. That's been developed by the ASO AC filled by the number of resources number ‑‑ the NRO NC. Three volunteers have done an amazing, from this region, done an amazing job here with support from staff. There is a presentation in the Community Plenary tomorrow, so please go there and have look at that.

The next steps is we have provided a document to ICANN for their consideration. There may be small adjustments needed so that this can be implemented in a good way. Then the plan is to then have a last call on the final draft and then the ICANN public comment process according to ICANN's processes and then adoption by the RIRs and ICANN boards.

Then of course we need to start to develop the implementation procedures, and according to this document, we have a three year timeline to get compliant with this.

So this is going to be a major undertaking and it's also something that is still not entirely clear what the costs of this will be, but that's kind of maybe the biggest risk in the budget next to the technical infrastructure.

Policy implemented. Revocation of persistent non‑functional delegated RPKI CAs. So removing things that don't work. That's a great I think this.

And this week we have sent warnings to three CAs for, that's been non‑functional for seven days and for ten days and 30 days, this is now going forward, as you can see from the numbers here, we have done quite a lot of work here already.

You now can find a ASPA in the RPKI Dashboard and if you don't know what ASA is, it's AS path authorisation. It's a way of signing to the world around you which path you want your traffic to say, so that in addition to your RPKI statement on which AS can announce your address space, you can have a signed statement on who are your peers that you like your traffic to flow through.

Resilience. We are committed toe collaboration with the government entities and intergovernmental organisations. We have been in Geneva this year and held a session for co‑organised with the permanent mission of Lebanon at the ITU buildings where we have 30, 35 different countries showing up with their staff from their local embassies, their permanent missions in Geneva. And it attracted interest from all the five six biggest country. So this was kind of an indication that what the RIPE NCC is doing has high interest in the area of plenipot and there were even people there from Norway and the Netherlands that told me afterwards that since they don't work in the Internet and the telecommunications policy, this was really interesting to learn more about.

We also had a meeting where we also had breakfast with local officials, and at the EuroDIG, I believe this summer, a colleague, was participating in a panel there. So, we are trying to be present in these foray so that people know what the RIPE NCC is and why we are there and why it's important with an open and transparent Internet.

Security and compliance:

That used to be what I did before I took this job. I was working as a C so and feel it's still what I'm doing because there are so many new legislations and regulations that are coming in. We have a strong security and compliance team. We are now really close to getting in ISO 27001 certificate. The audits are taking part this quarter and this is not something that we are doing for the sake of getting that certificate but it's to demonstrate and document and have a system that makes sure that we live up to the obligations in regulations like NIS 2.

RPKI SOC 2 Type II, that's a higher level of scrutiny. It's not only enough to show that we have a system that, you know, is sufficient to ensure security. It actually checks that we have followed the controls through the whole year. So, yeah, and I think for something like RPKI, that is important for all of you when you use that to secure your routing, it's important that we keep that on a very high level.

Enterprise risk management, we now introduced a new organisation Wade risk register it identifying the key risks and established treatment plans and ongoing manager. We have for years had a bottom‑up risk register with risks from all the teams but now we have consolidated this on an enterprise are risk level.

Business continuity management framework. Part of this certification continuity management. What do we do if something goes really wrong?

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And that means first and foremost, continuity plans and test them. That's something that has started and is going. So I am happy to see that.

Legal compliance update. Well prepared for the NIS 2 Directive and the tools to implement that is the ISMS, the information management security system, that we are certifying on ISO 27001. We have also updated our internal procedures for reporting incidents in line with those requirements.

The NIS 2 is called the cyber security act in the Netherlands and it's final put in force from August this year.

E‑evidence is another European legislation, we don't know exactly how that will work out because the Dutch implementation isn't clear yet, but we have all procedures on how to deal with requests from the Dutch competent authorities, so, we will extend those to also handle requests coming through the e‑evidence system.

Continued sanctions compliance. Continuously screening and investigation potential sanction matches. So this is the reason we are matching all the members through a business ID from a business register for all of our members because then we can also use tools to match that towards the EU sanctions.

We do produce quarrel sanctions report so you can go in there and see it's more than 3,000 matches flagged and luckily there is not that many of those sanctions that apply to us, so there is a lot of false positives, and that's not something that can be easily automated, that goes for internal and external legal review before we take be action. We have an ongoing engagement with the Dutch authorities to have their guidance on the appropriate compliance with Dutch and EU law.

Trust portal. If you want more information about this, go to trust.ripe.net. We have now added information there about the NIS 2, the other information has been there for quite a while on policies, SOC 2, ISO and so on. So please have a look at that if this is in your field of interest.

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If you want to find out more about the RIPE NCC, we have held eight presentations at this RIPE meeting, so feel free to have a look at those as well.

He we hold quite a few events around our service region, Serbia, RIPE 92 in Scotland, NCC days in Latvia, Internet measurement days in Bulgaria, CAPF, Internet measurement days in Romania and now we are here at RIPE 93 in Bulgaria.

So what value does this give you? We are a trusted registry and services that allow you, our members, to directly manage their Internet number resources.

We offer a portfolio of technical infrastructure and operational tools that can help you, our members, to run networks securely and reliably.

We have operating shared Internet infrastructure, measurements, routing data and research that members would find difficult or inefficient to reproduce themselves.

Cooperating technical community, training ecosystem and institutional voice in policy and Internet governance discussions.

A trustworthy, secure, resilient and well governed organisation capable of providing all of this over the long term.

Any questions?

ONDREJ FILIP: I didn't see any questions, but, you know, if you are thinking about one, there will be still space.

So, with that, I think we can continue to the next point which is the report from the Executive Board.

And delivered by me. So...

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First of all, let me introduce you to the great people, the great seven non‑executives that together make the Executive Board. I will introduce them from the right to the left. So, Lars Liman, Randy Bush, Sander Steffann, Piotr Strzyzewski, the secretary of the Executive Board, Raymond Jetten, the treasurer of the Board, Maria Hall, and the ugly guy trying to unsuccessfully behind behind her it's Ondrej Filip, it's me.

We are quite busy in this period. We had like, we had four meetings, two of them were physical, one was virtual, using video, and one was just meeting by e‑mail.

In those meetings, we amended or approved amendments of a few important documents. First was, it's called handling requests for information, orders and investigations from law enforcement authorities. This was related to a topic that Hans Petter already mentioned, the e‑evidence regulation, so, we had to amend that in accordance to that.

Then the next document is called due diligence for the quality of the RIPE NCC registration data.

And this amendment was necessary because the Database Working Group reached consensus to add a company registration number, so we had to amend the document accordingly.

The next document we touched is called management regulations of the RIPE NCC. And I hope it was more a theoretical exercise, but we amended in the way that it's clear how to handle reports concerning the Managing Director and the members of the Executive Board. Again, I hope we will not use that, but it's in the document.

The next change was in the document RIPE NCC certified professionals service terms and conditions. It was due to rebranding because now the RIPE NCC certified professionals services has been replaced with RIPE NCC academic service and the RIPE NCC certified professionals has been replaced with RIPE NCC academic certificate holder. So that's the only change we made in the document, but it was necessary to mention the terms that are used.

The last document is the RIPE NCC privacy statement. We were approached by some Dutch agency and the result of the discussion with them, we needed to article, the terms which attention period are applicable for which data. So it was more making it more clear.

So those are the documents.

We passed several resolutions, this time there was a lot of them. First of all the RIPE NCC approves the Executive Board approves the RIPE NCC strategy for 2027‑2031 and directs the publication of the document. This happened already. The document is published as the RIPE 862, and if you didn't read it, I recommend to read it, it's about 21 pages of a document, just 18 of them has some content and it's really nice and easy readable document. From this place I would like to thank you everyone who commented who was involved are on that, from my colleagues in the Executive Board, from you, and of course most importantly the staff members who are working hard on that, so thank you very much for that.

We have strategy for next period of four years. It's five, isn't it?

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The next was the RIPE Executive Board reviewed and approved the RIPE NCC treasurer according to the agreed yearly review cycle. This is no change, this is the annual review we have to do with that document. There is no change.

Then, also, we resolved to cancel the licence and the registered a company branch registered with Dubai Development Authority, before we founded the RIPE NCC Middle East as an LC C we used the branch to operate it, which is now not necessary because the daughter company in Dubai is fully functional and established be so that's why we deregistered this company, and of course it will completely fulfil its obligation and it will be liquidated. So that's the branch.

Then we resolved that the RIPE NCC will fund physical participation of Working Group Chairs at RIPE meetings in corners with the process described in the document RIPE working Chair financial support as amended from time to time. The RIPE NCC Executive Board reserves the right to reevaluate and, if appropriate, to amend or revoke this resolution for the future.

This policy has been with us for sometime, I think the first time it was in 2020, then it was approved for temporary time, I think till 2023. It was approved until 2026, so now it's permanent. I must say, the Working Group Chairs do not use it quite much, they are very conservative in using that, so it's not a very used instrument, but it might be sometimes necessary in order to run some Working Group if we have lack of people that are on site and stuff like that, So that's the main purpose of the document.

Then of course, we approved the publication of the draft agenda for this General Meeting. So, you saw it.

Also, we appointed two people to the Board of the Rob Blokzijl foundation, and that is Lars Johan and Franziska Lichtblau. Thank you so much for your volunteering and we which you good luck in serving this foundation.

We had to appoint somebody because one, our representative decided to leave, and that was Falkvon Born Stead, who has been the Board of the foundation for a very long time, so let me thank you him and if you can help me to thank you him for his service because it was an excellent service.

(Place applause)

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Then something which also Hans Petter mentioned. We temporarily restrict the ability of RIPE NCC members to acquire additional LIR accounts, including the a.m. significance of additional LIR accounts due to changes in two RIPE NCC members' business structures.

An also temporarily suspend existing, ongoing or pending requests of RIPE NCC members to open additional LIR accounts. Again we reserve the rights to reconsider in any time.

So, it was kind of commented by Hans Petter so I don't know if I need to go through all the points.

There is a very nice article written by Marco Schmidt on RIPE Labs which I suggest you to read which explains the rationale for this. Currently just 2% of the members use the multiple LIR accounts, which is roughly 400 members. We are in touch with them, we are trying to hold them and to understand why they are using multiple accounts. This instrument was very much used in the time when there was still some address space available and it was, let's say, convenient for the company to open multiple LIRs in order to get more address space. It's not the case today. So that's why the number of multiple LIRs is declining.

Again a resolution which will be, it has its own item, agenda item in this General Meeting. It's called the structure of the association, the RIPE Executive Board approves the amendments to the RIPE NCC Articles of Association and instructs the preparation of a relevant resolution for the adoption of the proposed amendments by the next General Meeting.

So, that is happening now. Basically, we try to reflect something which I at least told you if not one before, at least if not the one before, I am sure it was the last meeting, that we are Executive Board consisting of non‑executive people. There is something wrong in that. We studied structures of the other RIRs, we also took of course legal advice, and we really spent a long time just to make sure that we do the right change. So now you will see the output of that. There will be an agenda point and also I suggest to you to read Athina's article at RIPE Labs website, which explains in detail all the changes.

Just to let me comment the fact that from the members' point of view, not much changes. You will still have your Board members, you will still be able to elect your Board members, there will be the general manager as usual. So, the change, although legally it's important from the practical round of the association, we hope it will not be significant.

So, that's it. Then also we passed a resolution to nominate the following people to the panel. I will not read all the names because I am sure I will read it wrongly, but Karla will do it for me later. She will introduce you the names, the candidates of the panelists.

Also, of course, we approve the publication of the RIPE NCC activity plan and budget for next year.

Also, we appointed Herve Clement to the Number Resource Organisation Council, as the representative of the RIPE NCC. Herve has been passionate about working on that, thank you again for volunteering to serve for another three years, I guess you are now the Chair of the NRO NC. So thank you for your work.

(Applause)

Things that are maybe not in the resolutions or in the documents, but we discussed a lot of other topics, the first one is obvious, the activity plan and budget, that's the core business of the of Board of course. Also, in huge detail, we discussed the IT infrastructure project, as this is a huge investment in our lifecycle. Also we discussed the office improvements in order to make a better environment for the staff working in the Netherlands.

We also paid attention to the RIR governance document, as mentioned by Hans Petter, so, it's kind of on track, we are in the final phases of the negotiation so hopefully we will see some output soon.

The governance structure that has been a long time on our list, and now you see the results. Also we discussed the events sponsor criteria, multiple LIRs and waiting lists an NRO NC appointments. I repeat some of the things I mentioned already.

We prepared two resolutions for this General Meeting. One is the redistribution of the surplus. I will not read it now because, you know, my time will come at the end of this day, so I will read it again. But basically, what we suggest is that if there is an excess of contribution, it will be added to RIPE NCC reserves and in case of deficit, this deficit will be covered by RIPE NCC membership.

You know, I guess we explained to you that we propose a deficit budget for the next year, so we will need some funds to fund the infrastructure probably mainly, so, we suggest you to vote. Yes, but if you don't do it the opposite will be true. So the excess contribution will be distributed to you members and the deficit will be covered from the RIPE NCC reserves. But again the Board suggests you do vote positive yes in this resolution.

This resolution requires a simple majority in order to be approved.

The resolution number 2 is the amendments to the Articles of Association. Again, there will be longer discussion on this topic so I will not delay. But again, the Board has been working for a long time on this and we strongly suggest you to vote yes on this topic. And for this resolution to be, this resolution requires two thirds majority in order to be approved.

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That's of course not everything we discussed. We work on the classical topic, as you would expect, our goal is to build a stable future for the RIPE NCC, and especially for us as a secretariat to the community so we would like to continue to support this community in the long term. We still work on the governance structure, but this is the important milestone, I guess. We work with Hans Petter to ensure good information sharing and engagement levels, and we are fulfilling corporate governance and fiduciary responsibilities.

In order to do the job better and better, we are happy and open to get some feedback from you. Especially in the topics that are the core business of the Board, which is the RIPE NCC strategy, charging scheme and activity plan and budget, but of course you can discuss any detail of your work.

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There is several ways how you can talk to us. One is here today, you can talk here formally at the General Meeting. But you can talk to us informally during the whole week we are all here, we try to go to all social activities and we are, I hope, easy to approach. So, don't be afraid to talk to us. Of course, if you prefer writing, you can write either directly to us or to the mailing list. And sure, there are also some unofficial chats. We try to monitor them just on the basis for example to be honest, I have to work sometimes, so I don't read everything, which is written in those chats, but that's also an option to approach us sometimes.

What ‑‑ when we hear some comments or some ‑‑ we discuss with somebody, or, let's take it personally, if I do it I usually do not respond directly. It's not a sign of arrogance, but we are seven people, I need to talk to my fellow Board members and discuss that. So, I usually do not answer directly. I just explain, for example, what was the rationale of some decision, and then if I have some suggestion I go to the Board, so it takes sometime because we need to accommodate diverse and conflicting viewpoints so that's the reason for the delay. And we try to speak to everybody. So usually in a mailing list there is just one answer either from the Board or the staff. So, you don't get like seven different e‑mails on same topic. So don't take it as a bad sign if we don't answer in a second because we are seven people in a different part of this continent, so, it takes some time for us to co‑ordinate.

But everything you raised to us it's really ‑‑ the notes are taken and we discuss it seriously.

And that's it. The so, now is a time for questions. If you have questions to the activity draft and budget or to the change of the Articles of Association, I suggest you to defer those questions there will be better time for that but of course you can raise any topics right now. I don't see any activity in the room so I'll ask Hans Petter to present his part.

HANS PETTER HOLEN: Thank you. How many of you heard my presentation in the Services Working Group? So, most of you. So, I don't have to repeat it all then. I have all the slides here so I will just take you to it, but I also have some bonus slides so you need to pay attention to see when they are.

So RIPE NCC activity plan and budget. We're organised in four divisions, registry, external engagement and community, Technology and organisational sustainability. We are now going into a new strategy cycle and and focus is going to be on more resilience, security and independence, you have already heard the presentation on the IT infrastructure in the previous Working Group in the Services Working Group. And that will be, you know, the main driver in this document.

The new strategic areas, they are not that different from the last, but it's, you know, a new focus. Registry accuracy, Internet resilience, scaleability and routing security, data and insights, Community partnership and trust, RIPE NCC governance and agility and execution culture. So that's going to be the six strategic focus areas for the next five years.

The budget:

So the goal is to strengthen the resilience of our services which requires significant investments in our infrastructure. We talked a bit about that at the last meeting where we see that there has been significant under investment over several years and catching up with that in addition to equipment having been extremely ‑‑ there's been extreme price increases in equipment with memory and storage and so on, makes this quite an expensive project.

There is no proposal to increase the LIR account fee now. That was done in the 2026 charging scheme in May. So with the income of 42.5 million euros, that was set by that charging scheme, we now have expenses of 44.2 leading to a negative result of 1.7 million. We will increase the FTE account in the technology area and the CAPEX is budgeted to €10 .5 million.

You can have a look here more at the split of the different things.

I think the explanation of the changes in the budget is always interesting to go into, it's a bit easier if I zoom in. Personnel costs, we want to keep talent and staff. That means we need to keep our pay policy and adjust salaries according to the market. We also have additional staff added in the technology area to do the lift in technology.

The project, as such, has a price tag of 1.8 million but we do expect around a million savings in all the IT contracts and systems.

Now, investing 10 million or 7.7 million in infrastructure leads to some depreciation over three and five years, depending on the lifetime of the equipment. And then the depreciation next year will depend a bit on when exactly the investment is done.

The office investments is of a different order of magnitude, but it's still there, and we do have some budget reductions in other areas which brings us to the 44.175 million euro budget.

So, looking at the different divisions. The registry, point 3% increase, so basically efficiency to cover salary adjustments and inflation, technology is a significant increase, and then the other parts the same.

This is kind of the voiceover to this. What's worth mentioning here is that external engagement and community remains at 9. 8 million for the third year in a road. We are shifting resources to maintain the events that we have planned, that's not sustainable going forward. So we will have to have discussion in the coming year on the meetings and how we are going to fund that going forward.

Technology. The CAPEX is interesting to dive into. Technology, 8.29 million euro. Infrastructure is at €7.68. Then we need lifecycle replacements on the DNS infrastructure, K‑root and AuthDNS. That's around 300 K. Then some of the RIS infrastructure needs new equipment. So that's around 70 K. And then as always laptops come to end of life. They need to be replaced and equipment and meeting networks that we use for these meetings also needs replacements from time to time. So we have some room for that.

Then the facilities areas, we have 2.19 million set aside for office renovations.

So, registry. Will as I said flat, here you can see the focus areas for how we are going to be more efficient to pull this off. And then there is very little changes in the budget between the different registry areas.

On technology, well 14% budget increase. So, I note this that some people in the Services Working Group asked if there was enough money in technology, and as a former tech guy, I can fully appreciate that question, although there is other parts of the organisations that also need funding, right.

The main thing here really is on the modernise the technical infrastructure, but we also want to stay on top of RPKI and that development, RIPE Database, security development on the DNS infrastructure, and RIPEstat usability and integration and so on. It's not that everybody is going to work at the infrastructure all the time. I think everybody will be affected by it but hopefully not so that can't do anything else.

So technology changes: You will see there is a big change in business applications. We have strengthened that team already with another FTE, and then the main change here is in IT, all the other areas have the same budget as last year which means that they need to be a bit more efficient in order to handle increases and market, and inflation.

External engagement and community. I said a lot of that already. We still want to support NOGs and RACI and fellowship mentoring and newcomers programme, because it is important that the community do not have an increase of average age by one per year, because then we will die out in the end. And having in our next generation coming in and be ready to take over when we retire, that is very important.

You can see here from this graphic that there is a shift from the other areas into community building to cover the events that we have already planned and signed up for next year.

Organisational sustainability.

Yeah, the Amsterdam office is an office that we have been in for ten years now, and that needs repairs and updates. There are also other minor things like updating the new performance management system that's hopefully more intuitive to use and implement the personnel continuity plan because thinking about those now, A third of RIPE NCC staff is here so it's important that we are able to continue to run RIPE NCC when ‑‑ in case we all get sick from a stomach flu next week or something even worse, right.

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I think I mentioned all of these things already so I won't go into too much detail here. The interesting thing is actually returning to the investments.

And Sjoerd talked about this if you are interested in technical detail, please have a look at his presentation and I know he is eager to get advice from people that's been through similar journeys. And it's really a big project trying to break dowm that 7.7 million. We put in this graphic here, you have the architecture that he presented in the last meeting on one side, and you can see it's a bit less than a quarter that goes into the network infrastructure. So the routers, firewalls and load balancers as such. It's more than a quarter that goes into compute and storage, the virtualisation platform. And there is a chunk going in to backup and there is some budget here for servers that ‑‑ service that is we don't run on the virtualisation platform. So we have the room to continue to do that, and there are also some investments in data centre infrastructure as well. So that's basically the mix of this. We don't have the final quotes to sign on everything, we are still negotiating with vendors so things may change a bit so I haven't put in any detailed numbers here, I don't think that's appropriate when we are negotiating with vendors.

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The office. So why do we have to spend money on the office? Well I need staff to carry out all the jobs in, that the RIPE NCC has to do. And for staff to thrive and work together, they need to meet from time to time and that's in our office. So we need to do upgrades to adhere to health and safety regulations, such as climate control and noise reduction. There were changes done to the office ten years ago when the RIPE NCC moved in that has been affecting the climate negatively so we want to fix some of that. When you build walls in office buildings that has been designed for large open landscape, then the climate system functions worse so we need to fix this.

We have been in the office for ten years, so, wear and tear, that needs fixing. Our lease has ten years remaining so this is kind of an investment for the next ten years. So we need it to make sure that the office stays functional.

You and we also want to make our office more effective for hybrid working. We have already done quite some upgrades of the video conferencing equipment and so on. So, not everybody has to be in the office to take part in meetings but we have experienced that we need more of quiet spaces and places to have such virtual meetings.

And we have taken out all the nice something from the original proposals of three and a half million. The proposal now is less than two and a half million. We have evaluated three years for architect firms and have chosen one of them, so the next steps now is to get concrete proposal for the upgrades from the architect before we make a final decision to our contractors and go ahead. All the details aren't in place yet, but we have kind of come to the stage now that the moment the Board approves this budget, we are in a position to start to sign contracts.

Now, how do we fund this? That's been one of the questions that I have gotten several times. So, if you want to buy something, you can basically do that in three ways, or two ways. You can go to somebody and loan the money, Then you have to pay it back. Or if you have the money in the bank, you can simply pay it. So RIPE NCC is in the excellent position that we do have significant cash in the bank, Simon will show that you in his financial report. So if we now invest 10 million, we just put in a round number here, then that will show up in the operating the P&L as depreciation over the next, over the lifetime of this investment. So for the infrastructure, we then put in five years in this model, so that depreciation, which is booked as a cost in the budget every year, is not, is cash that we have already spent so that will be added back to the accounts. So after five years, for the infrastructure and ten years, or nine years here for the office, because we won't finish the project within a year, so it will take nine years to the end of the lease but that's just a technicality, we will have paid back everything so that we have the same amount of cash in the bank at the end of the nine year period that we had when we started. Why don't we ask you all to chip in and pay a one off for this, 10 million divided by 20 thousand members and you pay it all off next year? Well that would be a surplus in our accounts, which would be taxable. So that's not a good idea from that point of view. So, paying it back over time is also much nicer for your budgets, so yes, there will have to be an increase in the charging scheme of between five and seven ‑‑ or 3 to 5 percent a year I think we said in an e‑mail we sent out. But we don't know all the details there yet, because there are other uncertainties in our future as well, such as the RIR governance document which the implementation of that we don't know exactly what it will cost yet. This was trying to illustrate that the easiest way is to spend our own money. We can of course loan the money or we can, as the third option, have a leasing agreement, we will get offers on that as well. Then there is the technicality of us not owning the equipment which more most practical purposes means nothing, but if this leasing company is owned by a foreign government that wants to mess with us, well then we have vulnerability in that. So it's really difficult to see what's the best one here.

Of course you want to have as much money in the bank for a rainy day but maybe this is a good thing to use the money for. That's a decision the Board will have to make when we get to sign off on the budget and the investments.

Timeline for comments. The draft was published in September. We have the General Meeting now so now you can ask me questions and give feedback to the Board and the final activity plan and budget will be approved by the Board in December.

Please provide feedback. And the main takeaways in case you fell asleep during my presentation; we want to renew our own technical infrastructure. We want to refurbish our Amsterdam office. We have stable budget across three divisions, and this is a draft plan and budget, so please comment and give us feedback, thank you.

Questions?

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Peter Hessler: What way do you vote in favour of the draft activity plan, one concern I have seen over the last years is that the budget keeps shrinking and while I want the NCC to use the budget to correctly for the benefit of the NCC and the members, my concern is by wasting money by not investing properly, and not being able to fulfil the task that the money was meant to solve. So, I am hoping that we can get to the members to increase some of the fees so we can actually have a larger budget to handle some of these things more correctly. Thank you.

HANS PETTER HOLEN: Thank you for that feedback. Anyone else?

I was expecting a long line and 30 minutes of Q&A but apparently this was crystal clear, so thank you very much.

(Applause)

ONDREJ FILIP: So now Simon‑Jan with his numbers.

SIMON‑JAN HAYTINK: Hello everybody. I am Simon‑Jan, chief officer for the RIPE NCC, this is my 12th time presenting at the GM. My most important mental for today is that we we remain financially stable. Furthermore to provide transparent insight how we as the RIPE NCC are doing financially over time I tend to us auto the same slide setup, it's to allow for comparison if you wish to do so. My aim in this presentation is to give you an objective view of our financial status. In other words a have you and fair view of our financial position. Annually external auditors audit the numbers and me we provide assurance that we indeed share a true and fair view. So let's get into the financial update.

A quick recap of our financial strategy. We have a not‑for‑profit funding model. Our funding strategy aim to generate sufficient income so We can fulfil our obligations in a stable and predictable manner and we are committed to maintaining a low‑risk profile.

The key messages for this engines were:

Income is over budget with 1%. Costs are under with 5. Resulting in a bigger than budgeted operational result. Forecasted operational result is the best information we can provide at GM to base your redistribution vote on, this currently is forecasted to be €1 million. Furthermore the membership fee continues to be an issue. Since the start of the year we have our treasury portfolio managed by ABN AMRO. We are financially stable and looking ahead three major points. The propose projects with significant financial resources required, a continued strong focus on cost control automation and efficiency, and we will consult with you as the membership on the outstanding recommendations from the charging scheme task force.

The financial update.

Our financial performance year‑to‑date. As said, income is 1% over, costs are under with 5%. And we have 4% percent more LIR accounts than budgeted for at the end of Q3, with 20717 LIR accounts.

Unfortunately, our financial result is 49% under budget with September being a bad month for our portfolio.

The financial story so far:

Our income is at 31 million. Expenditure is at 29. Providing an operational result at the end of September of €2 million. A return in our reserves of €308,000 resulting in a preliminary surplus of 2.3 million euros at the end of September. Please keep in mind that we still have Q4 to go, which is traditionally an expensive quarter including the costs for this meeting.

Our balance sheet for September. Our balance sheet remains healthy. I show here the consolidated numbers which exclude any intercompany transactions. A clear example of an intercompany trust anchors is the loan the RIPE NCC N and L provided to the RIPE NCC Middle East. This loan is currently valued at 684 thousand or 2.7 million AEDs after a pay down in 2026. Initial value of this loan was 1.2 million euro or 5 million AEDs. This loan also explains the majority of the difference between the consolidated balance sheet and the NL NTT's balance sheet, also shown on this slide. What I would like to highlight in our balance sheet is the high amount of cash we have available. Will this is a result from a very defensive investment strategy and a significant part of the cash we hold is non‑working capital, meaning we have cash available we can use if the major projects are to be approved.

Moving on to our income. A total of 31 million income as per September 2026. 29.7 in membership fees, compared to 30.1 million in September 2025. Sign‑up fees are at €636,000, compared to 559 in 2025. RIPE meeting income is 11% over budget and other income consisting for the majority of sponsorship including RIPE meetings sponsorship is 4% below budget.

New LIR accounts and closures, we see continued interest in the membership of the RIPE NCC as shown by the inflow of new LIRs. As you can see the 2026 inflow is comparable to 2025. Looking at the closures, they trended again similar to 2025 but we still have Q4 to go. The spike in June is due to the closure of LIR accounts due to non‑payment. We expect to end 2026 with between 20400 and 20600 active LIR accounts.

Members and LIRs. Starting point of LIR accounts 2026 was 20647. At the end of September, this is 20717. A net increase of 70 LIR accounts.

Looking at our members, we started the year with 19863. And we have 20,031 members at the end of September. So we can report a growth in members with 168 since the start of the year.

Overall, you can see a clear trend in our member numbers being around that 20000 mark.

Ongoing, or maybe better said, a continuous concern for us is the membership fee at risk. Unfortunately there is no update since the last GM, we continue to investigate all possibilities while we remain conscious of any potential risk associated with any solution.

We have a very low risk appetite generally speaking, which in this case is a good thing as it is a delicate situation.

With the current development in the region, do I not see a workable solution any time soon.

For Ukraine and areas in distress, the 2026 invoices have been issued and the due dates are being extended to the end of 2026 on request. And sanctions, we only issue the invoice if and when a member is confirmed free of sanctions.

So quantify this membership at risk at this point it's 7.8 million. As you can understand, this is one of our main concerns, specifically the 6.6 million from the ultra high risk countries.

Sanctions related. This outstanding amount goes down every time we can collect these fees. With regard to Ukraine, we still see payments coming in, which is a very positive sign.

As per the 2025 auditors report we no longer report the ultra high risk position on our balance sheet but we do record this off balance meaning it no longer inflates the value of our balance sheet, which is in line with the associated uncertainty. Will

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We will continue to report on this in the audited financial statements under the items not shown in the balance sheet.

To follow‑up on a question from the last GM, an estimation of the collectability. If we could indeed collect, what would be a reasonable estimate of that income.

So, 71% of the LIRs from ultra high risk countries have not closed their accounts or are not marked as possibly sanctioned meaning in a hypothetical situation we could collect an estimated €4.6 million. Of course, this is purely indicative as the reality could very well turn out to be different.

Payment behaviour: As always we can report positive payment behaviour. We wrote off less than 1% of our income as bad debt and this 0.92 perspective represents the closure of 183 LIR accounts due to this non‑payment. This write‑off is very low and in line with previous years. I do not consider this a reason for concern. The remainder of the outstanding items is explained by the draft payments extensions.

Looking at the Internet Exchange outstanding invoices aunt the granted extension requests. Will this slide does not show all granted extension requests, it excludes the ones have been that granted but have managed to pay in the meantime.

Ukraine has 45 granted extensions and a total of 68, 2026 invoices.

Moving onto the expenditures. The 2026 expenditures year‑to‑date. Total expenditures are 29 million, 5% under budget. Payroll and personnel expenses are under budget with 4% or 723,000 euros. We employed an average of 196.2 staff consisting of 5.2 employees record, 190.6 FTEs. Compared to a budget of 202.1, which explains us being under budget on personnel costs. Other operating expenses are under budget at 9.8 million. Depreciation and bad debts are 6 percent over budget at 763,000.

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Zooming in our our budget finances. As per September 2026, we are 1.7 million below budget. All costs categories are under budget except consultancy and depreciation. Although consultancy is significantly over budget, 878,000, this is offset by that under spend of 723 in personnel cost. Where staff goes on longer term leave due to sickness or maternity leave or we cannot recruit the required FTE we fill these spots with temporary consultants. As it would be unreasonable to push all this workload on our current staff.

Depreciation is only slightly over budget with €43,000.

Related parties year to date, September 2026. The intent of the related party disclosure is to provide insight to our stakeholders of any potential conflicts of interest based on financial transactions with a related party, in this case specifically or Board members.

New in this overview is net nothing which is due to our new Board member. In if I other related parties would appear, we would have a disclosure obligation and we would disclose not only to be transparent but also our external auditors would require us to do so. All transactions have been conducted within an arm's length and under regular market conditions.

Treasury. An unrealised positive financial result of 308,000 euros year‑to‑date, which is 49 percent below our budget of 6 hundred thousand. With a 0.9 percent, this return is lower than the September 2025, which was 1.6 percent. Of this 308,000 return, 243 is interest income and we have a 26 thousand positive result in our investment portfolio, which is significantly lower than last year. And lastly, a 39 K positive exchange result.

Our portfolio with ABN AMRO, they Have been managing other portfolio from the start of the year, the current value is 16 .5 million. Based on our treasury, ABN AMRO created a specific mandate for us and that mandate or risk profile is set to defence, with 10 per cent in equity, 45 in fixed income and 45 per cent in liquidities as the benchmark. As you can see at the bottom of the slide, our portfolio takes ESG into account.

The portfolio performance. Target return is between 2 and a half and 3.5% annually, for a defence risk profile is reasonable. The results so far is about 1% as of yesterday and is a bit disappointing but we have just started and the portfolio needs sometime to deliver. You see two dips in the performance of which the bigger one was due to the conflict in the Middle East and then an additional dip in September which explains the September year‑to‑date return of €26,000. As also shown in this graph, October is already showing some recovery with a current portfolio value being 16.6 million. Overall, I am confident that with our risk profile and mandate we will over time chief that 2 to 3.5 percent return.

The surplus, we start an overview of the P&L statement as September year‑to‑date. As mentioned we are currently over budget in income and under budget in expenses leading to an operational result of €2 million. A financial result of 308, resulting in overall surplus of €2.3 million. The profit and loss statement, consolidated and per entity. On the right the RIPE NCC Middle East: €1.1 million in income. The majority of this income is generated from the RIPE NCC in the Netherlands. That same 1.1 million is shown in the RIPE NCC NL expenses included in that 29.4. So these transactions were again defined as intercompany, and eliminated in a consolidated numbers.

To show some realistic numbers. This explains why the consolidated income and expenditures are lower than the sum of the two entities.

Then the 2026 full near forecast. Will I did not see any reason to deviate from the forecast as shared in the draft activity plan and budget, if I would have I would have shared that here in this General Meeting. The forecast on the very left shows the effect if a redistribution over 2026 would take place. My forecast expects the trend of the first nine months to continue but with an increase in suspending in the last quarter. It is my expectation that there will be a positive operating result eligible for redistribution at year end. I do not expect the mainly prongs, if approved, to have a significant effect in the 2026 P&L. A forecasts financial result of 6 hundred K, although this might be a bit optimistic. And I forecast to end 2026 with 20,500 active LIR accounts. Overall a healthy financial year and a better operational result than budgeted. Meaning a potential redistribution of an average of €49 per LIR account.

Now my favourite slide. The capital and liquidity slide. We remain balanced and healthy. A clearing house profit of 33.7 million to respond to uncertainty. We are solvent and in a robust financial position.

We have our investment portfolio up and running with ABN AMRO, member fees at risk remains a concern and due to the developments in the region, this concern could even increase. Lastly the budget for the proposed investments are not yet final, they have not been formally approved by the Board.

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The redistribution. Before I hand over to Raymond for the Board's recommendation, I want to provide full disclosure that there has been a change in the resolution compared to last year. This year the approval of this resolution would mean adding the operational surplus to the reserves where in previous years a rejection was required to add any surplus to the reserves. Please make sure to keep this in mind when you cast your vote. Raymond, I will hand over to you.

RAYMOND JETTEN: So, the GM redistribution vote.

The recommendation of the Board will be to approve the resolution to add the 2026 forecasted operational surplus to the reserves.

The reasoning behind it is the investments we are we want to make and we have budgeted for operational loss for 2027. Our intention to add to our reserves to offset the budget deficit in 2027.

SIMON‑JAN HAYTINK: The resolution for the GM is as shown as on the slide and in the agenda. And I will show the possible outcomes in the next slide based on the current forecast.

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If this resolution is accepted, there will be no redistribution. The operational surplus after taxes of about 750,000, and the financial result will be added to the reserves. Resulting in an addition of approximately €1.3 million to our reserves. With that, I will be forecasting to end 2026 with a reserve of about 35 million euros. If the resolution is rejected, there will be a redistribution of the operational result, which is forecasted to be that €1 million and be an ample redistribution of €39 per LIR account. If financial result will be added to our reserves as per usual ending 2026 with a reserve of 34.3 million.

And with my presentation comes to an end. So I can open the floor for any questions you may have.

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TOM STRICKX: Thank you very much for that. The given the current economic situation and conditions, we are already 49 percent behind budget, are we adjusting our budgets going forward for financial statements or are we expected to be under budget going forward?

SIMON‑JAN HAYTINK: With regards to the financial result? For the 2027 budget we already lowered our financial result from 800 to 600 but also on the expectation that the investment will be approved meaning we will have less cash available to generate, if financial result on.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: How confident are we that the investment portfolio is going to pick up?

SIMON‑JAN HAYTINK: Well it remains investing, but I think one of the ‑‑ you know, positive things about a defensive profile is there is a high level of certainty that the objection will be realised but I cannot give a hundred percent guarantee obviously.

BEN CARTWRIGHT‑COX: I am curious about the investment portfolio again, sorry, I think I asked this the last couple of times but it's the most interesting to me. It feels, or at least the mood in my eyes is that the economy might see a downturn in the next one or two years. What is the potential impact if that goes particularly sour on the portfolio? Like, how big of a loss is? What would that translate out for RIPE, or for NCC?

SIMON‑JAN HAYTINK: I find it very difficult to quantify that in exact euros but I think with a very defensive risk profile and a portfolio that follows that, actually maybe a downturn in economic situation would not be a bad thing for the return on a defensive profile.

BEN CARTWRIGHT‑COX: You are saying that the provider of the investment product is aware of this like situation and might be avoiding such a time bottom companies.

SIMON‑JAN HAYTINK: Yes, generally the products in the investment portfolio are very secure and are not majorly affected by a significant downturn in the economy.

BEN CARTWRIGHT‑COX: That's very reassuring to hear, thank you.

SIMON‑JAN HAYTINK: Are there any other questions?

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(Applause)

ONDREJ FILIP: Next on the agenda is Athina with amendments to the Articles of Association.

ATHINA FRAGKOULI: Hello everyone. I am the Chief Legal Officer of the RIPE NCC. And I'll present to you the proposed amendments to the Articles of Association.

As Ondrej said, we are focusing on the Board restructure this time. And the reason, again, as Onjrei said, is that there is a discrepancy currently between the official role of the Executive Board as described in the Articles of Association and the reality. So, according to the articles, we have an Executive Board which is responsible for the management of the association. In reality, the Executive Board has no executive role. They are not involved in the day to day management. They only supervise the Managing Director.

And again, the Managing Director officially is delegated as part of the management of the association, when in reality is the person actually responsible for the day to day management of the association.

So, what do we propose is a new structure where we have one Board consisting of non‑Executive Board members and Executive Board members. The non‑Executive Board members will be responsible for the supervision of the organisation and the Executive Board members will be responsible for the management of the organisation.

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This is a graphic representation of the change. So, we'll have the Executive Board that will become the non‑Executive Board members in the new structure and in the same Board, we will have the Managing Director as an Executive Board member.

Now what changes? As we said, of course the bodies change. The Executive Board currently may consist of minimum three, maximum seven members, and again they are responsible for the management of the association. In the new structure, this Executive Board will become non‑Executive Board members of the Board that will consist of a minimum of four, maximum seven members and they will be responsible for the supervision of the management of the association.

Now currently also we have the Managing Director, as I said, parenthesis, officially, technically we have a management team that may consist of minimum one, maximum three directors. The Board has appointed one director right now and this will not change. So, currently this director is delegated the responsibility for the management of the association and is invited already must be invited in all Executive Board meetings. So, in the new structure, again will have this flexibility to have minimum one, maximum three Executive Board members, again this is not the intention, we'll only have one Executive Board member, the CEO, who is responsible for the management of the association. With voting rights in the new structure. Because the Executive Board Board, the CEO, will be a Board member, so will have voting rights.

Also currently, the relationship between the Executive Board members between the Managing Director and the Executive Board members is governed by the interim management regulations. With the new structure, the big ‑‑ a big part of this internal management regulations are described in the Articles of Association itself. They are official. And they are public. Of course, further rules of this internal relationship can be defined in internal management regulations.

Another thing that changes is their representation rights. Currently the Executive Board acting jointly can represent the association and it's enough for four members of the Executive Board to act jointly to represent the association and they can delegate some of their powers also to the Managing Director. Well this won't change in the new structure. Still, the non‑Executive Board members acting jointly and at least four of them acting jointly can represent the association.

What changes is this: In the current structure, any representation rights the Managing Director has have been delegated to them by the Executive Board based on a power of attorney. In the new structure the Executive Board member, the CEO, can represent the association acting independently by law. Of course this representation rights may be limited by the non‑Executive Board members.

Third thing, big thing that changes is this: What happens in the event the Board doesn't have authority? Now, currently, if all Executive Board members are prevented from acting, or if the seats are vacant then the Managing Director temporarily is in charge and has the full authority to convene a General Meeting for elections. This does not change. What changes is this; if all Board members are prevented from acting or if all of their seats have vacant then the General Meeting is authorised to appoint one or more substitute, one Board members, executive or non‑executive, and this General Meeting may be convened by at least five RIPE NCC members. So, if there is no Board at all, five RIPE NCC Board members may convene a General Meeting to appoint one or more substitute Board members. It's a very low threshold and that's on purpose because in the event that no Board members are available or all Board members were incapacitated, this irregularity must be fixed as soon as possible.

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Now, here is the summary of what practically changes.

The Executive Board becomes the Board and that includes the CEO as an Executive Board member. The CEO has a vote for the Board resolutions. The CEO can represent the association independently by law. Of course subject to limitations by the rest of the Board. And if all Board members are prevented from acting, all seats are vacant. Five RIPE NCC members may convene a GM to appoint substitute Board members.

What doesn't change? What doesn't change actually is the fundamental governance relationship between the bodies. In the current structure the Executive Board member is elected by the GM and is suspended and dismissed by the GM, this doesn't change. The same people, the same seats as non‑Executive Board members will still be elected by the General Meeting and may be dismiss pound and suspended by them. And the Board's Chair, secretary, and Treasurer, may be selected among term, the elected Board members, and this elected boards may appoint and will appoint the Executive Board member, and they may suspend and dismiss this Executive Board member, so that doesn't change.

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Now, every time we amend the Articles of Association, we always find other things like typos and inconsistencies that we can fix, by the way, and in this particular time we fixed the consistent use of the abbreviation of the Dutch civil code, we separated the annual report from the financial report for ‑‑ which is more accurate description by law. The Amsterdam becomes municipality of Amsterdam. The approval becomes adoption of financial report and further typos and inaccuracies are improved.

Now, as we said, this change does not change the reality, but it's good for the better governance of the RIPE NCC. It's very important that what we write down is what we do. These changes will remove ambiguity of the roles, who does what, who is responsible for supervision, who is responsible for management. It clarifies these responsibilities, and ensures that the Articles of Association describe how the RIPE NCC is actually governed.

Any questions?

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I have a little bit of experience in the governance of the RIRs and how it goes very wrong. And I want to start something ‑‑ so, something really, really simple. What is good governance and what is good governance of Internet registries as an identifier provider? What do we want from it as members, as networks? We want stability. And how is stability being achieved in a governance. Very, very simple. If we put a dog in a control we still function. If we put a very bad person in control, we still function. Monopoly creates a constraint, it does not great a sovereignty, and often in IR system, and especially what we saw in the past years, a fantasy of sovereignty has been spared around the system, and this is danger to the stability of the entire Internet.

So, back to what's being proposed here. Some CEOs getting vote, the management committee becomes three, so theoretically the management could hijack the whole situation if the non‑Executive Board wasn't well‑informed. And if it were not, wouldn't be a problem in the IR system if all these voluntary Board seats are in some regions, not particularly here, because I know some Board members here does get involved, but in some regions become basically a beauty parade. They have no knowledge of management, then have no industrial experience of the, of being a Board member. They have no corporate knowledge of a political struggles in a corporation, they are good techies, they are nice in the community, people like them, so they are voted in. But management is different. They have actually exclusive power. They command actual armies, they are making actual decisions, they swear every day within the court. And this is a power this community really needs to consider to constrain. This proposed amendment to the best of my views, giving the board, giving the non‑executive, the elected Board, less power and give the management over the, power, I would go the other way. I would constrain the power of the people who actually spend the money, command the army, and I don't want to see the people who actually manage the company who actually know everything in the company gets the power. The power needs to be remain with the elected Board members elected by the community or by the member base? Why?

Because it's so easy to mislead the non‑Executive Board members. The people who control the actual company and operation can do a lot of things. We saw that as examples in many places, and especially in, not particularly this region, but other regions. So this amendment allows three Executive Board members, which is essentially the CEO and his directors who actually in control of the company getting the voting rights, and be able to vote in a Board meeting and feel an alliance. And in case something goes wrong they can make a decision and represent the company without even the proper authorisation from the membership. It's a danger to an exclusive power that we probably don't want for the sake of stability. Because let's face it, RIPE NCC as a registry works fine. The server is running, the staff are doing a fantastic job, It's not that efficient, you know, but it works fine. There is nothing worse that's so urgent requires the non‑executive member to do things without proper authorisation. So that is my comment. And I urge the membership to vote against it, and urge the RIPE NCC to come up with a proposal to restrict the power of basically the guy who manges the company. Thank you.

ONDREJ FILIP: Thank you very much. I was really pleased that you said that we are operating nice and that we are a good company, it's really appreciated. Thank you very much for that.

Let me comment your concerns. I would like to say that this change doesn't change the reality. It just reflects the reality. The fact that currently the Executive Board, so‑called, is people who are non‑executive and they give the power of attorney to a CEO, that wouldn't change in the new structure because in that new structure, there will be a CEO part of the Board, and I would like to say just one, and his or her power will be limited again by the decision of the non‑executive. So in that sense, there is no change, no transfer of power. Maybe one small tiny change that the Board will consist of eight people instead of seven, that's true, but I think this change is really negligible. Really small. So, I don't really share your concerns that this means any change of the power. Again, the non‑Executive Board members will be again elected by the membership, as they were in past, and again, known executive will appoint the CEO as done in the past. The main reason for the change was, you know, to deal with ‑‑ to make the structure reflect the reality and also to, let's say, decrease the liability of the non‑executives as they were the only ones who were named in the business registry. So that is the main reason for that, as said many times. Any other questions? Comments?

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Alex. I am a lawyer for the Amsterdam Internet Exchange. Two comments. Please forget about the Chinese disinformation, there is a minimum of four non‑executives, and there is three executives, so this scenario will never fulfil. And as a Dutch lawyer, I think this is a great plan, long overdue. So, members, please vote in favour.

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(Applause)

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Rob Evans. First of all, I'd like to say that I trust the Board to be doing the job that we elect you to do and exercising due diligence on what the management or RIPE NCC is proposing and carrying out that work.

I largely support these, I think it's a good idea. Just a little bit curious about one thing, which was the proposed amendments say one to three members of the management Board can become executive. The words you used were that's not the intention, it's only going to be one. I am just wondering what the process is going to be between it being one or two or three, is it purely something that the Executive Board decides on? Is it something ‑‑

ATHINA FRAGKOULI: Thank you, Rob. Just to clarify. It is possible theoretically for the Executive Board members to be one, to be two or to be three. This doesn't take from the seats of the non‑Executive Board members. These are, maybe extra. And it reflects actually the current structure we have now with the management team that would consist of one to three Managing Directors. Does that answer the question?

ROB EVANS: Not quite. Because I'm not talking about ‑‑ yes the number of non‑executive directors is fixed. You said one to three executive members, but that's not the intention, the intention should be one, so I am just wondering about what that process is between it being one and it being two or it being three.

ATHINA FRAGKOULI: I see. What I meant is that yes, the articles will provide for the possibility to have more Executive Board members, but right now the intention of the Board is not to introduce new Executive Board member seats, will only have one.

ROB EVANS: And is that intention documented in the minutes of this meeting?

ONDREJ FILIP: The current articles allow us to name the management team already. So we thought that in the future it might be practical for example if there was going to be a successor of the CEO or some other occasions to include one more, we put three there, I know this might sound strange, but we thought that there might be a reason to slightly extend it. But the current plan of the current non‑executive part of the Board is just to name one. That's it.

HANS PETTER HOLEN: If I may add to that, as you remember after my predecessor stepped down the Board appointed a management team of three interim Managing Directors, that then fulfilled this role. So that's a choice the Board had in the future. A CEO and co‑CEO in a transition phase could be another scenario, a CEO and a CFO or a Chief Legal Officer could be other scenarios, but that's not the intention of the Board now. And the Board hasn't seen the necessity of write their intention in the articles, that's open for future boards. How would that happen? That would be by decisions by the Board, so a majority of the non‑executive directors would have to make changes to the executive directors.

ROB EVANS: That's that last bit I was trying to get to. I am not even necessarily averse to being it a CEO or the CFO on the Board, just how we would get there.

ATHINA FRAGKOULI: It's by resolution by the Board that appoints the CEO as the Executive Board ‑‑ yes, definitely, that would be all the formalities will be followed. Thank you.

TOBIAS FIEBIG: Speaking for myself. We heard comments with a lot of pathos about the people and their rights to power. What I would like to remark is that we are not the people, we are the members, and we are a membership organisation and in a membership organisation the members at the General Meeting has the ultimate point of decision. What is changing is a bubble above the GM and who, being accountable to the GM, can sign and can carry authority and responsibility that unifies some things on the executive director but it also brings an additional resilience because I heard that in other RIRs, for example, the personal responsibility and accountability in front of the Board members might have been recognised. And if we then think about what benefits can be brought from a more easily targetable governance structure which we now try to remedy by focusing the accountability and the responsibility on a person that might also have more easy access due to their role, for example, insurance for these cases, we are actually making our governance structure more sustainable against such attempts. And then when we have the part of talking about the people, and many people think about socialism then, then we also have to think about money and why one might not want a more robust governance structure against such attempts. But, I think that can be left as an exercise to the reader. Thank you.

TOM STRICKX: CloudFlare. As being a Board member of INEX that's been on the receiving, or executing side of a change in MoU, I can only commend you on the work you have done so far, the explanation has been very solid, thank you very much, it makes this a whole lot easier for the membership to understand. I would like to think making informed decisions. I would like to get some clarity a bit more on the change in the way that we can get a General Meeting going when the entire Board is gone. I am not saying that there is a high likelihood of this happening but, you know, imagine the likelihood of this happening, what happens if you have five RIPE members but you have six pools of them that then each convene their general meetings, where do we end up there, is there any process for this?

ATHINA FRAGKOULI: Thank you for this question. The plan is to come up with a process and also with a tool as we have tools for the objection system for the members, we have a tool for possible requests for a GM in general, that's already a right of a percentage of the members, so yes the idea is to come up with a tool that can be used that would remove any ambiguities on that. Thank you.

TOM STRICKX: Is there a timeframe for a tooling system? Is that something that's going to be discussed in one of the Working Groups?

ATHINA FRAGKOULI: You'll hear about it. Thank you.

HANS PETTER HOLEN: There are already provisions in the articles about how long in advance an agenda, and a call for a General Meeting should be sent out and that would of course also apply to this situation where then five members get together. So, you know, it requires interaction with staff that have access to the membership register and sending it out to all members, so if there are six different groups of five people that wanted to call for a GM, there needs to be a consolidation into one agenda and a set of votes there, and we also have regulations already for the election process for Board members, which would always apply. So, yes, we will make more detailed descriptions of this, but there are quite a few checks and balances in place already, it isn't that just five members can meet on the corner and appoint a new Board.

MAYNARD KOCH: As a point of order, I don't think it makes sense to speak in personal capacity at a members meeting. So, take it with a grain of salt.

First of all, would I like to echo that I fully trust the sitting Board, the Managing Director and the Chief Legal Officer with their motives and also with the output of the work. And would support that of course and you get an affirmative vote and I would recommend to the membership to do as well.

Second thing, a couple of questions have already been clarified, and thanks for these clarifications, I think there is a couple of devils in the details, especially around this, what I would like to call the morishish clause for reasons, and my concern is a bit that this is framed around a single incident or precedent, and a couple of open questions, no way questioning the output. But, your presentation mentioned the limitation of the power of the CEO. Of course independent of the individual holding that office, there could be a number of threats arising from that power, somebody could leave the NRO unilaterally, or call looking at the ICP‑2 thing, call ICANN for help unilaterally or something. So is ‑‑ since you were forward pointing already ‑‑ are there plans to frame this limitation of power? I don't want to have the full list now, just making sure that that is, and I am pretty sure that is following a thorough threat analysis of these different scenarios. Maybe you can elaborate on that for a moment. And by the way, the other point maybe I am adding that and I go sit down.

Can we assume that this is understanding the ICP‑2 isn't baked yet, or the successor, can we assume that the current proposal is what I would call ICP2 ready and we don't have to make amendments with the current status of the governance document. We don't have to make amendments the next meetings, or is that completely open? Maybe the second question is easier to respond to than the first.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I will start with the first one to give Athina some time to prepare for the second one if you don't mind.

Currently, the Managing Director has a power of attorney, a document saying what he can or he can't do. So basically the plan is in the December meeting of the Board, to adopt the limitation of the power which will roughly reflect the same amount of power that the CEO currently has, so that also I would like to ensure that this is also a sign that there is no shift in power from the current structure. Of course these powers are slightly amended from time to time, of course as the situation evolves, but the plan is to roughly keep the same level as Hans Petter already has.

ATHINA FRAGKOULI: Yes, thanks for the question. According to the impact analysis we have performed, we don't foresee any amendments that are necessary for the implementation of the RIR governance document.

HANS LIU: Just to be clear about what I just said. The new proposal seven elected directors, three management, and if three management get three elected directors, vote against four non‑elected directors, you basically have a voted in a director being override by the management, six against four in this scenario. That's the first thing for the membership to think about. Ten people elected, three are hired and those three people plus three elected, six people can override the four people, so basically three people overrides the majority elected Board, it's a simple mathematics. My English isn't perfect but I hope this resign with you. Okay. That's the first point.

ONDREJ FILIP: It's a lot of numbers, so we don't lose, then I will let you continue if you don't mind.

Again, I don't know if we are with the same numbers but the minimum of non‑executive is four, the maximum of executive is three. So, I don't see six against four. Can you explain?

HANS LIU: You have three appointed executive directors, correct?

ONDREJ FILIP: Might be up to three.

HANS LIU: Yes, you have got three. And you have seven elected Board members. Correct?

ONDREJ FILIP: That's correct.

HANS LIU: Okay. So three people appointed, they are not elected, plus three elected Board members, that's six people, right? Three plus three is six, correct? Then the elected Board member you are left with four. So you have four people against six. But in that scenario, it's ‑‑ for the elected Board member it's actually four against three.

ONDREJ FILIP: But I can develop a scenario that we will elect three, seven people and they will do something wrong of course, yeah.

HANS LIU: The principle ‑‑

ONDREJ FILIP: Again, there will be a minimum optimum seven minimum, four non‑executive who are elected by the members. They have always bigger power than the three appointed.

HANS LIU: The point here is this new structure creates an opportunity for an elected Board member, the majority of elected Board member will be overrides by collusion with the management. Does that make sense?

HANS PETTER HOLEN: So today I need to convene three Board members, let's take out collusion, but I need to convince four Board members out of seven to get the majority vote. In the new structure, if there are eight votes, I get one vote, but still I need a majority of four, so four will ‑‑ so, it will shift with one. Now in the scenario you add three more, then, you know, you need those three and yes, so your numbers are right, there is a slight shift here. In practice today, the Board works by consensus. So there are very few, maybe one resolution a year, where there is somebody saying that I am not in favour of this. So if you want the statistics, you can read, they are there. But it's not even once a year, so the way we work on the Board is consensus, so, creating these scenarios for the daily life, not that relevant I think. For the extreme cases, for the sort of ‑‑ of course this is, this is an issue. But how realistic it is that the three present management team convinces three others to get six out of the total, I don't know. The

HANS LIU: We are discussing ‑‑ we are discussing principles. So this creates an opportunity for a majority members the elected Board, the imagine order elected Board will get overrides by the management and point out that risk. Okay ‑‑

HANS PETTER HOLEN: The risk isn't that the management can override the elected members because the elected members have the majority, it's about how many votes I will have to convince of the elected members which one.

HANS LIU: The problem is if you rollover ride the majority of the elected members, it's not just elected members, this creates an opportunity for you to override the majority will of the elected members. That's the problem I want to point out. And the mathematically check out, does that make sense?

ONDREJ FILIP: I understand. But again the non‑executive member has always bigger power than the executive appointed. Thank you.

HANS LIU: The second comment is that the non‑executive members has terms, and the executive members does not have terms they are basically permanent. For the most part. So unless the executive members' term is being reviewed on by non‑executive on an annual basis, then this is giving them too much power to the CEO structure. And the last part of it is why formalise day to day management requires the entire package of additional power really. I don't believe that we need to give executive management the entire package of additional power with this amendment. That is my comment.

Secondly is, I am calling for against that I understand lawyer on identity discrimination. At this point I have been being a European resident longer than I have been a Chinese resident. That hardly matters. Being Russian, Dutch, Ukrainian, has nothing to do with your argument and discussions of the governance of the RIPE NCC. And calling me Chinese discrimination is clearly against the identity clause in your Code of Conduct. I am making formal complaint on that. Thank you.

ONDREJ FILIP: Thank you very much. I will just comment, the performance review of course, we have good governance in the company so the CEO goes annually through the performance review, where we, you know, check all the goals that the CEO got at the beginning of the year and at the end of the year. So there is a standard procedure which will not be amended in this case. Sure, the CEO is appointed for indefinite of course but can be removed as everyone of us can be removed. But thank you for your comments.

REMCO VAN MOOK: Speaking on behalf of ‑‑ as a member of the RIPE NCC. And also as a former Executive Board member of the RIPE NCC.

First of all, I would like to give you a bit of history. The first time that this was discussed in the RIPE NCC Executive Board was in October of 2010, and I know because I was just elected and this was the first point I brought up. And I am exceedingly happy to finally see reality being reflected in the Articles of Association. So, I would very much like to encourage everyone to vote in favour of these.

Now, some of the statements made by the previous commenter I found them generally misleading and some of his early statements frankly offensive about how easy it is to mislead Executive Board members. I do not think any of this holds merit and is any reflection of how the Board operates. There has always been a freedom of the Managing Director, the management team in the current articles that allows the management team to make most of the day to day decisions. Indeed, the articles, as they are today, block the Executive Board from making operational decisions. So, let's be clear about that.

Second, the risk of capture or collusion, whatever. This has come a very long way from the articles that we had when I joined the Board, because if you think this is scary, the Board articles, the articles of the association when I joined the Board allowed for two of five Board members to make any decision they liked for the entire association. So we have already come a very long way. I don't see how having a non‑Executive Board of seven elected members and one non‑elected member, which is a completely normal and rational structure, would pose any risk to the organisation. I could say a lot more, but I'll leave it at this. Thank you.

ONDREJ FILIP: I thank you for the comment, and Remco, also I would like to thank you for the work you spent on this issue because you were a key person in the discussions in the past. So thank you very much for that.

PETER HESSLER: In the new proposed structure, there will be eight members. Or eight members that have voting power on the Board, both executive and non‑executive. While I understand that generally you come to a consensus of a majority ‑‑ of either anonymous or super majority, what happens in the case of a tie vote for a certain situation? I guess Athina would you be best to clarify this or... Ondrej?

ATHINA FRAGKOULI: Yes. This needs to be clarified indeed.

PETER HESSLER: That would be wonderful to clarify. I would love to hear that.

HANS PETTER HOLEN: So the simple answer to that is that if you need more than 50% of the votes, then that is six out of ten in order to get a majority. I'll let legal have time to answer that. But this is, you know ‑‑ unless things are worded very unfortunate then that's the basic rule.

PETER HESSLER: I do not expect it to come up soon ‑‑

ATHINA FRAGKOULI: Usually if there is a tie, usually, it's rejected, the resolution is rejected, that's the usual norm. But we'll come back to you.

PETER HESSLER: Thank you.

TOBIAS FIEBIG: Just maybe as a point of memory and clarification, of course our personal identities don't matter here, we're here as operators and members, but when it comes to understanding Dutch law and the RIPE NCC is an association under Dutch law, being a lawyer in the Netherlands might qualify more than being a computer scientist in Austria to make qualified comments about the quality of a text that will be interpreted under Dutch law.

ONDREJ FILIP: Thank you very much for that clarification. Any other questions? Are there any questions in the chat? No. Thank you. In that case, let me thank Athina for the hard job she went through.

(Applause)

I would like to ask Karla to come to the stage.

ATHINA FRAGKOULI: Before you start, so, the recollection I had about the tie is rejected, I didn't remember where I read it. It's in the proposal.

KARLA LIDDLE‑WHITE: Hello everyone, my name is Karla Liddle‑White and I am a senior communications officer at the RIPE NCC and I am going to take you through the information you'll need for the RIPE NCC arbiter panel election.

There is an arbitration procedure in place for settling disputes, and they also evaluate requests for Internet number resources by us, the RIPE NCC. Now, the RIPE NCC conflict arbitration procedure is available for you to go and read. I am not going to explain it all in this slide deck, we'll be here all evening. That explains their role and the scope of the arbitration process in lots for detail.

So, a little bit of background from me here. We made a call for arbiters back in February. That followed the expiry of Keith Mitchell's term, 12 people applied, two withdrew from the process, and two never replied to my e‑mails again for further information. So, we then had eight remaining volunteers that the Board nominated to stand for election because we had more applicants than we had seats.

The GM has the final authority to approve arbiters, which is why we are asking you to vote in an election this week. And after the approval of the GM, the arbiter immediately becomes available for settling those disputes, and their membership in the panel will end at the autumn GM in 2031.

What do you have to be and do to become an arbiter? The criteria is thus. They must be a natural person. We have done ID checks on all of them so you are voting for real people.

They must have a good knowledge of the Internet And have experience in the IT sector. It's also really good if they have a knowledge of RIPE NCC procedures and RIPE policies. The entire arbiter panel should reflect a broad spectrum of the Internet community as well.

So, the candidates are:

Victor Bolanos Guerra, Jean‑Paul M Chia, Kurt Jaeger, Ralf Karseboom, Matyas Koszik, Klaus Landefeld, Benjamin Nivois and Giuseppe Pitzus.

We then move on to where you can find the information.

So, we have made one web page, it has how each candidate meets the eligibility criteria. We asked them to fill out how they feel they meet it so you can go and have a look on the website and read through it before you then go and vote on the assembly voting platform.

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That you know that's me done for that part of my presentation. Do I have any questions on the arbiter panel election before I move on? I am not seeing anyone move. So, I will go to my usual speech.

Voting on the resolutions and the arbiter panel election. A bit of admin first. There is no paper ballots at this GM, electronic voting only in line with the Articles of Association and what the Chair has put forward here.

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Voting analysis. We now publish voting analysis after every GM on RIPE Labs and this will be published in November. So, no numbers from me today. Which I am happy about.

Voting on the resolutions. Here we go. We have got two resolutions for you all to vote on. Resolution 1 requires more than 50% of the yes votes to be approved and resolution 2 requires the majority of at least two thirds of the votes. Abstentions are noted but do not count.

Voting on the election. Will there are eight candidates with six seats. We're going to use instant run‑off voting as we do for the Executive Board election. Now you must choose at least one candidate for your vote to be counted or you can abstain and then you number the candidates in the order of your preference. You do not it need to number every single candidate if you don't wish to do so. And again the ab essentials are noted about you we don't count them in the result.

Instant run‑off voting. If you have never voting at the election before, for this one we are using the same format. The voters rank candidates in order of preference, first, second third and if a candidates gets more than 50% of the first choice votes, they are elected to the first seat. But if known gets that 50% the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and the votes for the eliminated candidates are then re assigned to the voter's next choice. This process repeats until one candidate has a majority and is elected to the second seat and so on and so forth.

How to vote. So in your inboxes you should have two e‑mails from assembly vote can already. The first e‑mail has this lovely vote now button on it, so just click that one. The voting code one should be pre‑filled. And then your other e‑mail has your GM registration number which is the code you need to get into the platform.

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So, you click the button, you see this box, put that code in the box there and then you can click go to ballot. And you'll see this. You'll see resolution 1. You can choose yes, no, or abstain, click one of them and click the confirm button. You can then, if you have got several votes as I know many of you have do, you can use the up and down arrows and click how many votes you'd like to assign to the votes, click confirm and cast.

You'll then see this, if you have got any votes left, you can keep rolling through and keep assigning new ballots until you have no votes left. Then you can click continue.

Then you'll get this nice little green box once you have assigned all your votes which means you can move forward. Check you have done the right voting there and then click continue.

Which brings you to the arbiter panel election. Again, click the candidates in order of preference. Again you don't have to click all of them. And then confirm your selection. Or click abstain.

And as I said, again if you have several votes for this one and you are assigning different orders to the candidates, just keep going through and assign your votes. And click confirm and cast. This will bring you to submitting them, check your votes please because once you click submit there is no going back. Click submit there. And you'll get to track your ballot and you'll be done. You can either scan the QR code or you can just save your tracking code there and then go back to the page to check on your votes, which would bring you to this page. So you can have a look at what happened and when and you get a little congratulations message.

That's it from me.

Troubleshooting. Please check your spam we get a lot of e‑mails, generally they are in your spam. If you are using Safari the first code won't prefill so you have to put two codes in. Please check your e‑mail servers is TLS 1.2 compliant. I am still saying this now. The tracking pixel, we only track who has opened the e‑mails. We don't use any other information there.

Don't leave it too late. Once it's gone past the voting time, the platform closes and we cannot open it at all. So please don't leave it too late to vote. And if you do need help, we are here, we have got Boris on the AGM in box and I will be at the help desk if you need anything between 9 and 5 tomorrow.

Voting can take place once Ondrej says so in a minute. Will you can vote until nine o'clock UTC plus 2 on Friday, 30th October. And the voting results will be announced at half past ten here in the main room and also using the live stream link that you got in your Meetecho e‑mail.

I think that's it from me. If there is any ‑‑ oh, we have a question or a comment.

PETER HESSLER: I have a comment for the room. I remember at the last General Meeting a few people complained to me that they had forgotten to vote or they were too late on Friday. I want to encourage you you have all 24 hours of Thursday to vote, so please pick your favourite time on Thursday, which is tomorrow, and vote.

(Applause)

ONDREJ FILIP: Thank you very much Karla, great presentation and apparently absolutely clear. So thank you very much for that.

So, this is the end of the first part of the General Meeting. Let me just recap on the both the resolutions we will vote on. I will read it in my beautiful Czech accent ignoring the English grammar so you will like it.

"The General Meeting approves to add/subtract the excess contribution deficit paid in the financial year 2026 in the following way:

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In case there is an excess contribution, this will be added to the RIPE NCC reserves.

In case of a deficit, this will be covered by the RIPE NCC membership in 2027."

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Note: If the membership does not approve the resolution, the excess contribution paid will be redistributed to the membership in 2027 according to the RIPE NCC clearing house procedure and the deficit will be paid by RIPE NCC reserves.

That's rulings number one.

Resolution number 2.

"The General Meeting, in corners with the Article 21 of the Articles of Association, adopts the amendments to the Articles of Association as proposed and announced by the Executive Board on 30 September 2026.

Furthermore, the General Meeting instructs and authorises the Executive Board to perform or to have performed all that is required to have the amendments executed before a Dutch civil law notary."

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And as we already said, the Board advises the membership to vote yes on both resolutions.

Then we have the arbiter panel action. So, we have eight candidates for six seats, and we have of course no recommendation how to vote, it's up to you.

So, with that, let me enjoy this moment, it's my, as a father and as a husband it doesn't happen very often that I say something and something happens, to so let me declare that the voting is open, the General Meeting is adjourned and we will reconvene on Friday at 10:30 UTC plus 2. Thank you very much for all your comments. Thank you.

(Applause)

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GM adjourned until Friday 30th October at 10:30 a.m. for results.

General Meeting Results

October 30, 2026

ONDREJ FILIP: Thank you very much. I think I need to wait 30 seconds because I don't want to steal this presentation for the people who are remote and they are just on time coming to the presentation. So 15 more seconds and I will start I promise.

PAULIUS JUDICUS: There is enough time for a joke.

ONDREJ FILIP: Well maybe the joke will be in the presentation, we'll see!

We can go, yeah. So good morning everyone and I am here to present you the results of the voting at the General Meeting. I was asked by the Code of Conduct team to remind you the Code of Conduct applies also to the General Meeting so I am doing that, please keep this in mind if you have any remarks during the General Meeting in the future. Please keep it in mind to follow the Code of Conduct.

But now let's go to the things you are probably interested in and there were two resolutions both had some recommendation from the Board, so let's see if you follow the recommendation and there was election of six candidates for the Arbiter's Panel.

So resolution number 1, did you follow the Board's advice? I must say yes, you did. So we had 583 'yes' votes for the resolution number one and 432 'nos' so this means the resolution was approved. So in case there is an access contribution, it will be into the RIPE NCC reserves which will be used next year and in case of deficit, it will be covered by the RIPE NCC membership in 2027, thank you very much for listening to the board.

Resolution number 2, the amendment of the Articles of Association. We needed two thirds of votes in order to approved and this happened. We had 761 votes that supported the resolution and only 172 against. So again the resolution was approved.

And the General Meeting instructs the Executive Board to perform all actions required to make this amendment live. So thank you very much again for listening to the Board.

And now the elections. So on the screens you will see six names and here you can see them, so it's Victor, John Paul, Kurt, Ralph, Matthias and Klaus, so thank you, thank you to everybody and also help applause the winners of the election, thank you very much.

(APPLAUSE.)

Also thank you Jeremy Harrison from APNIC and Mikhail from ARIN who were independent observers of the General Meeting voting results process, thank you very much, guys.

And you can read the full voting report on the URL on the screen and if you are interested in the detail, all the numbers will be published of course and with that I declare the General Meeting closed. Thank you very much and enjoy your coffee.

(Coffee break).