Stenography Transcript

RIPE 90
General Meeting
14 May 2025
4 p.m.

ONDREJ FILIP: Good afternoon everybody, we'll start in a few seconds, if you could please sit down.

So we can start. So good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, my name is Ondrej Filip, I am the Chair of the RIPE Board and my task is to introduce the agenda and welcome everybody to the general meeting. We will have tonight.

Before I will do that, I have a few administrative matters, first of all, me as a Chair of executive board and also Chair of the general meeting I made a very clever solution and I point at Athena, the Chief Legal Officer of RIPE NCC as a sec for the general meeting and also do not forget this meeting is not just recorded but minuted, the minutes will be published on Tuesday so two working days after the meeting and you will have a chance to review them and also make a notice of what objections, so if there will be more than a hundred such members who object to meeting minutes, there will not be more than a hundred members objecting the minutes, then the minutes will be approved and binding. So the procedure is that you will be able to object on the same pages as the materials, so the same web page.

Also another important note, please do not use your phones to make a photograph, you know, photos here. We have an official photographer who will make pictures from this meeting, so please let's let just let the photographer take pictures of the meeting.

And with that, I can introduce you the agenda, so we have 12 points today.

Point number one, welcome and preliminaries, that's right now happening, that's me.

Then we will have report from RIPE NCC delivered by Hans Petter; there were already four presentations, two from a Hans Petter and one from fill leap and Hisham during the NCC working group, he will bring some key take aways and more information related to ICP‑2 and stuff like that.

Then again me, I will have a report from the executive board and I will be happy to take any comments and questions. Then Simone will present the adoption of the RIPE NCC financial report 2024 and I will follow up with my favourite topic which is the discharge of the executive board, I hope that's going to be quick.

And then we will have our, a little bit longer presentation about the arbitration procedure during this general meeting, we have nine resolutions and six of them are related to the arbitration procedure so it deserves some explanation of course. That's going to be delivered by Kevin.

Then we will have a report from the RIPE NCC Charging Scheme Task Force presented by Peter Hessler, the co‑Chair of the task force. He is nodding, he is here, so everything is perfect. So that's going to be for the future.

But for the near future, we will have a presentation again by Simone about the RIPE NCC charging scheme.

Then I will stop chairing the General Meeting because the next point is Executive Team election and because, you know, I am for reelection, I cannot Chair this, so the rules say that it should be chaired by the oldest standing board member which is Remco, so he will take over the microphone and continue this general meeting. We will see the voting and resolutions and the executive board seats, then the general meeting will be stopped for a while and the announcement will be on Friday and I am sure am Remco will explaining what's going to happen on Friday.

And we are done. So that's the agenda.

And without further ado, I will ask Hans Petter to start his presentation.

HANS PETTER HOLEN: Thank you Ondrej.

So good day again, I am Hans Petter Holen, the CEO of the RIPE NCC, and as if you were in the Services Working Group already, you have heard my announcement that I now have a Chief Registry Officer, Gabor, in my executive team, he is sitting there. So if you haven't seen him or talked to him yet, you can do so after tomorrow. Also in the Executive Team you know my CTO Philipe, Chef Community Officer, Ibrahim Hisham, Eleanora, or CFO who will speak later today, Simone Jan, our chief HR officer and Carolina, chief legal officer Athena. And to organise and assist me, Daniella, my executive assistant, you may have seen her at the registration desk already.

That's the team leading the ship during ‑‑ between the board meetings and the GMs.

So the article says in the GM we should discuss the services of the RIPE NCC and for that purpose, we have the Services Working Group which is then considered part of the GM, we have already given four presentation on the registry, technology, external engagement and the upcoming strategy plan, the highlight is the high workload of last year, we have done more than two hundred ARCs each month but we had a significant workload on the member services and registry, mainly due to the introduction of two‑factor authoritative cation, that increased ticket load of 20% during the year.

We further automating our due diligence processes, I talked a bit about that and also you seen face recognition in order to make sure that it's not only a valid ID but it's actually EU that's presenting the idea to us, not somebody else and I have already mentioned the Chief Registry Officer. In tech technology, Philipe talked about security compliance and we have obtained the ISAE3,000 Assurance Report that basically states that we have a control system in place for RPKI and that takes care of security and resilience for that system. And we know working, we have done quite a lot of work on increased security on the single sign on service and other services.

Cost effectiveness, has been an important implemented a technically sound and financially stable solution for storing RIPE Atlas historical data and he also explained how we are now looking at the risks that is happening around us and reviewing our strategy on Cloud and other subcontractors, due to newly identified political risks.

On external engagement and community, community project fund was put on pause in 2024 and the Board has later, based on the review, decided to discontinue this activity.

RIPE NCC fellowship future plans, it's currently in review and we have planning to revamp this into an impactful and more streamlined fellowship and introduce alumni network and then the 2025 is a year of internet governance, WSIS plus 20, 20 year after the WSIS process, IGF in Oslo, reaffirming and playing an important role in being there and making our voice and position visible in the foras leading up to IGF and this is plus 20.

The events is maybe the most visible part of what external engagement is doing, we had round table meetings in Europe, southeast Europe, regional meetings in am two RIPE meetings in.and two internet measurement day, rather than sitting in Amsterdam waiting for you to call us, we are going out to create engagement on the ground where you, our members, are.

Now, the last part of the organisation is kind of doing internal support, we have labelled it Organisational Sustainability. We have implemented a new management system, so for those of you in security, you know about ISMS, Information Security Management System, if you worked with quality, you have heard about Quality Management System. We have our RIPE NCC management systems with the roles and processes and procedures and so on that crisis the work that we are doing and that's a basis for the certifications that we are doing. We have enhanced legal framework, that's never ending story with new legislation coming our way, we have to review it and see where we need to update our own governance, we have strengthened the RIR system through the ICP‑2 review with NRO EC, we are continuing to work on sanctions compliance, you know yes it's fully automated but then there is legal review which is a manual process for each individual case that we need to, that is flagged to us. And yeah, it is what it is, it's work that needs to be done.

We have implemented SOC 2, as I mentioned, and we prepared for NIS 2. And we have also worked on operationalising our Middle East entity, and there is a lot of paperwork, and you will see, and opening bank accounts and transferring money and resigning contracts, which is all work in progress and we will really soon be there before this is fully operational.

On the budget side, we had ten and a half million set aside for these activities and we spent only 9.6 of them and you can see here how that distributes across the different areas. We had an under spend in information security, not because we don't think it's important but because it's been difficult to recruit people and if we are not able to recruit people, we can't buy the systems that we want to use so things takes longer, right.

Looking at the organisation, we were 182.9 full‑time equivalents, that kind of sounds a bit sterile, like, it's more people than FTEs, but that's the way we count this, up from 181 at the end of 2024.

38% women and 62% men and you can see here the distribution across the different areas of the organisation. We have 45 different nationalities and speak 38 languages and have a turnover as low as 6.6% and that's down from almost double a year before. So I think we have really had achieved quite a lot of work in maintaining a great work space and diversity in the organisation.

Looking at the age distribution here, you would imagine that we would on average get one‑year‑older each year, this year we got a year younger, we are recruiting younger people to so can he weep the average down. Not that that is a goal in itself, age and experience is important, grey hair, wisdom, you know. But it's important that we review the organisation and get ‑‑ make sure that when I retire there is somebody there to take over.

Commitment to security and integrity, I talked about that in all of my slide decks today, we obtained the.SOC2 report, we are working on implementing 27001, we do this because, one, DNS services fall under NIS 2 regulations, the route server do not, it has special provisions in the regulations. But other DNS services we provide, but we also, in your value chains, you our members are regulated by NIS 2, at least if you are in the EU, or most of you, that are in the EU, fall under some kind of clause there and we then need to provide assurance to you that you can trust our services.

And this is why we are then doing IS027001 and all this needs robust risk management framework.

Now, that's kind of the synopsis and quick repeat of the 20 minutes presentation that I gave earlier. What I did not mention but you may have heard on Monday if you attended a workshop or in the address space working group this morning is that there is work in progress on the criteria for establishment of new regional internet registries, we don't have any immediate plans to establish any new ones, but we started to look at this document because it it is 25 years old and it's time to see is it still fit for purpose or do we need to add more there. Now that was a criteria that was used to establish AfriNIC and LACNIC, what it did not specify which is more implicit is that once you have been established, fulfilling this criteria of course, you have to maintain, to provide services with these criteria intact and if you don't well then you shouldn't be, you should fix it or you shouldn't be a RIR, that's the two additions to this.

In Q1 and Q2, 2024, we started a review, the address council drafted core principles that we have gotten community input on the principles, we have had feedback and reviewed on the reporting. The address council has drafted and published and updated document and we are currently in the public comment period of the drafts and since you are the member of the RIPE NCC, this document kind of is boring because we have the RIPE NCC and the RIPE NCC is doing an amazing job so why bother. Well, this actually describes and sets the standard for what we should do on the high‑level, please read this and comment. If you support that, it's great to hear. If you think it's missing things, please let us know about that so that we can go through a final review, maybe more reviews, if there are significant disagreement and then eventually for approval and adoption.

The timeline because it's important to have a goal and have this time bound is at the end of the year, but of course the result is more important than the time here, we want to get this right, not on have it done by Christmas mass at any cost.

Questions, comments? Wow, nobody! Oh yes. Lu, what's on your mind?

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Hello ‑ Lu, in terms of ICP‑2 and the RIPE NCC operations and it's a very recent event, I have raised an issue of a number of probabilities a number of times and now I have taken this issue to one of the leading antitrust firms in the Netherlands and I saw a message on the antitrust matters, yes, allow me to be accurate, so, a second so... qualifies association on the taking in a sense of EU competition law... activities such as allocation number resources RIPE NCC is also regarded as undertaking under EU competition law. And as a non‑association of undertaking, you must comply with Article 101 of the treaty on the functioning of a European Union, TF EU, which prohibits decision by association... which may affect trade which a member states which have their objective or effect of the provision restriction of distortion of a competition with the internal market of the European Union and this matters and potentially going to cost RIPE NCC tens of millions of dollar in antitrust suit if not dealt with properly. But there's an easy way out from the ICP governance revision, if number probability as well as recognition of the member rights, today the RIPE... agreement does not explicitly recognise what rights a member has to the registrations of their numbers. If those two things are done. Number... and official recognition of member rights registration of their numbers would easily get the RIPE NCC out of this potential huge trouble and just our charting scheme revision, if this lawsuit is coming through at European Commission level, we are looking at double probably triple membership fees for the next few years for defending the indefensible which RIPE NCC is a monopoly and its members don't have rights to switch providers, if they wish to.

Just on that comment, any question from the Board or Hans?

HANS PETTER HOLEN: Thank you very much for your insightful intervention here. When you talk about number portability, I assume you mean inter RIR transfers?

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: No.

HANS PETTER HOLEN: If you are talking about transfers resources between members in the RIPE NCC, we have policies for that so that should be well covered as well as inter RIR transfers, we have some addresses that are truly portable from one provider to another and your search can also get provider aggregatable addresses that are not portable from one of our members to another. So when you talk about number portability, it could be good if you clarify exactly what you mean and we are happy to look at this if you could share this also in writing so we know exactly what your concern is.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I will share a plenary report to the RIPE wider community can see after this session, of course, and just to clear here, the number probability I meant here is not about transfer resources, it means if I am not happy with RIPE NCC as my registration provider for my numbers, I have rights to take any numbers to ARIN, to LAPNIC, to wherever I want to. Two, as the same restrictions was provided. Which means it's not a transfer, it's simply switching of a provider. It's very much like number portability of your phone numbers, if you are not happy with your, I don't know, T‑Mobile and you want to change it to to Orange, you are freely and entitled to do so, take your number with you. That is what I mean by number portability, it's an inherent rise to the registration and that's part of the member rights and I want RIPE NCC to look at it legally and also closely and also very importantly together with other RIRs, in an antitrust lawsuit is initiated, it will be a global matter, this will not be a regional matter. ARIN and all the other RIRs will be subject to the same problem because you guys have an. ..of territorial exclusivity so member rights close to goes way beyond that and member rights, calling them number portability should be recognised and seriously considered by the Board of RIPE and also the Board of other RIRs and considered by the wider community here in RIPE. Because an antitrust law is lawsuit is very, very expensive, and to date RIPE NCC cannot afford it. Thank you.

HANS PETTER HOLEN: Thank you very much for those comments, when you compare to two mobile numbers, I think it's important to point to that for the internet we have something that calls DNS, that gives you portability between providers, to your point on transferring all your resources from one RIR to another, I do believe that's possible with today's inter RIR transfers at least it would be with the RIPE NCC if you are an ARIN or APNIC member, you can become a member of the RIPE NCC and transfer your resources here, there may be some policy obstacles you may have to full till but I don't think we are far away from that goal, how it applies to other RIRs, I cannot answer here, I am happy to bring it to the NRO so we can discuss this fully.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: A follow‑up will be spent to the RIPE list for everybody to look and comment. Thank you.

ONDREJ FILIP: Thanks Hans, thank you for the question and comments and I think we can move to the report from the RIPE NCC Executive Board.

So the Board you can see, the full board in front of you but can't see very well, you can see also on the screen, I will read the names of the board members from left to right and top to down, so the Board consists of: Raymond Jetten, the treasurer, Harald Summa, Ondrej Filip, the Chair, Sander Stefan, Piotr Strzyewski, the longest standing member, Remco and also the nicest member, Maria Hall.

Since the last general meeting, we have been working quite hard, we had two physical meetings and as you can see, a lot of meetings done by email, there was a lot of discussion and documents. You know we have very transparent bodies, all the meetings are detailed and minuted and you can check the minutes from the meetings on the website, the link is provided in the presentation.

We adopted four quite important documents but those documents are ‑‑ happens almost every year, it's not a surprise for you. We adopted the RIPE NCC activity plan and budget for this year. Also we adopted the annual report of the previous year and related document, the financial report and also we adopted the charging scheme for the year 2026, and that's something that will be presented and voted on today or tomorrow or before Friday basically.

So those are the, this is the standard set of the documents. Also the amended sum of the documents that are related to RIPE NCC activities, two of them are a meeting registration terms and conditions and virtual meeting registration terms and conditions, the changes most relayed to new entity RIPE NCC Middle East, which you know was established so it's basically that this entity also may process data from those meetings.

Also we imapproved the changes are mostly related to the clarification of the role of the treasurer in.travel approval and stuff like that.

One document is very special because we amended it twice I think, the more you amend privacy statement, the better Board you are.

So first of all, the first amendment was related to Dubai entity and then there was a few amendments related to customer management, network security and things related to this, so there are some changes in the privacy statement. Also we changed the handling requests for information, orders and investigations from law enforcement agencies, this document was written in 2016 so it became during over the time a little bit inconsistent so we kind of improved consistency of the document, also woe updated the travel policy, those changes are matching the management regulations, roughly the same area.

We also updated RIPE database acceptable use policy, it was, we made the document consistent with the current practice, how we deal with acceptable use policy and also we updated two other documents, they are very related fellowship terms and conditions and academic co‑operation initiative terms and continues, the changes of mostly related to changing conditions for people who ask sponsors to travel so it was related to insurance and also what happens if the travel plan is disrupted.

And the last and not definitely the least there, RIPE NCC conflict arbitration procedure. I will not tell you what are the changes because there will be a presentation on this issue, it's a very important document, as I said, and there will be six separate resolutions about it.

So, we also passed a few resolutions, first you can see the text on the screen, I will not read it, but you can read it, it's in the minutes. First of all, we authorised Hans Petter to sign an inter‑company agreement between NCC and the NCC Middle East and also we resolved to provision a loan between RIPE NCC and NCC Middle East, this was necessary to create the bank account to have some initial capital for this entity to work, and there is also an interest rate, it's just a transaction between daughter and mother company, so it's not a real business transaction per se.

Also we were requested by the NomCom, the Chair of the NomCom team to indicate the salary for the future RIPE chairs, so we did and we made an indication what we expect the salary for the RIPE Chair, that's a paid position, including some compensation for the RIPE Chair, so that was another resolution. And Hans Petter has already said, we also.suspended the activity of the community project fund.

And that resolution was the selection of the individuals to form the Code of Conduct team for the Executive Board elections and I know there was some discussion about this resolution so we took a lesson from that and we have a task with RIPE NCC is to improve this process. We don't feel it's for the Board selects people who oversee the election of the board, I think the procedure should be a little bit different so that will come for the future but this is the formation as it was approved and I would like to thank those five people for volunteering and helping this process to be fair and transparent.

We also discussed many other important topics first of all and I mentioned it many times during my presentation, the set up of RIPE NCC Middle East FZ LLC, it was discussed almost at every meeting we had, also very important topic that was mentioned here, many times there was an Open House about it, a presentation, Hans Petter also mentioned it before me, the criteria for establishment of new regional internet registries, very serious and important document, then the future of the project fund which I already commented. Aligning RIPE NCC's strategic objectives with funding. We are trying those matches, very important activity and Peter will have a presentation about it, the RIPE NCC charging scheme task force, we have the task force has some report and they will report the activity.

And also one important thing, in January the Board and Hans Petter attended a training given by a Dutch corporate governance expert and we were discussing, if the structure, the current legal structure matches us is really a good way how to go for the future, so we took a recommendation from this training, we really widely discussed one kind of funny element that we are called the executive board consisted of non‑executives, right, so there is something wrong in that and this expert of course confirms this suspicion and the recommendation was to transform the structure to two tier structure, that means that there would be a supervisory, non‑executive board which will be roughly the same as the Executive Board today and then having the Executive Board appointed by the supervisory, so from the election point of view, nothing has to be changed but in all this change of course is important, it's not for discussion or voting today, we will prepare detailed materials. And also I think there will be some public discussion before it, so just you know, a warning this is going to happen, that's going to be an agenda for some future meetings.

All going well, this is kind of pretty standard slide, we are working on building a stable future for RIPE NCC and especially that change of structure strategy and stuff like that, they are important. We are working together with the managing director to ensure good information sharing and high engagement levels and I must say it's going well right, Hans Petter, I hope. And we are fulfilling the corporate governance and fiduciary responsibilities.

We need your feedback. We encourage you to give feedback, we encourage you to give us feedback regarding the most important documents mainly, which is activities and budget, you are invite to discuss in the development of two most important documents for our work which is charging scheme and activity plan and budget and in future, there will be also strategy. So those are important documents so please try to engage, try to discuss and try to recommended.

Also we ask you for the important specific RIPE NCC services, also we need to know if we are doing a good job, effectively if we are doing well, what do you think about our job, there are multiple ways how to do it, you can talk to today during the general meeting of course but also you can approach us informally on social events and many of you do so, thank you for that. And I am always happy to discuss with anyone of you.

Also we have the member list, we organise very often Open Houses which are kind of focused on several topics so if you are interested in the topic, please join the Open Houses and try to talk.

And also there are some non‑official community channels like the telegram chat for example. I just warn you this is not an official channel, we are not monitoring it like the old board members closely and it ‑‑ if something is just discussed there, it might be lost so rather use some better ways but of course that's also a possibility.

And very easy ways to email us directly to exec‑board@ripe.net.

If you send such an input, it's not lost, we definitely take into account everything we receive from members. But just please understand that we are multiple individuals and you don't want to get like seven responses to any topic you suggest or to any questions. So usually it takes some time, we need to discuss internally and then we speak one voice but that's the definitive voice, that's why we don't kind of reply in a minute, it takes some time to discuss internally and have some really well structured answer and supported by documents and everything like that.

So that's it. That's, this concludes my presentation but before I will open mic for discussion, I have another very pleasant duty actually. There's one board member who decided that he doesn't want to be with us any more, I don't know why. But I am sure he has very serious reasons. So Mr Van Mook, thank you very much for that great 15 years, you are really a hard‑working person, very knowledgeable and we are very grateful you dedicated so much of your time during those 15 years. You are very passionate in helping RIPE NCC and I must say I was really proud working with you, personally, because I learned a lot from you, your experience and passion for NCC and the community is just exceptional. So thank you very much for that. I hope you will support me in thanking this great gentleman for his excellent service.

(APPLAUSE.)

REMCO VAN MOOK: Thank you Ondrej, that's entirely too kind. No really. So, wow. When I ‑‑ I never imagined standing here 15 years later, when I was dancing on top of a bar in Prague to celebrate getting elected to the Executive Board back in 2010. That's a long time ago.

So what I ended up doing, I spent ten years as Treasurer of this place and I spent a lot of time doing all sorts of accountability and transparency in the financial accounting of the organisation, working together with Johanne, the former CFO, to work and get ourselves up to that next level of transparency, which has now resulted in an absolutely super ‑‑ all the highest standard of accounting we have fully gap compliant, we have unqualified ‑‑ qualified opinions from accountants. For everyone who doesn't know what it means, the accountant you pay to be picky on stuff doesn't have anything to pick on and they write it down in a letter, it's the highest praise you could possibly get from an accountant, I have got nothing to say.

So we got that.

As a brand new board member, I got railroaded into then chairing the previous charging scheme task force which ended up with the charging scheme that we all know and love or hate, that's entirely up to you.

And we have of course have the treasury statute that I have my fingers in. We expand the Board from five to seven people because we were getting kind of busy and the organisation wasn't actually getting smaller and the responsibilities certainly weren't getting any smaller. And, well, I mean then we had the whole mess happening in 2014 in Crimea and the whole political pressure that was then put on RIPE NCC and we had of course IANNA transition and the establishment of the RIR stability fund that I helped write.

Then after that, I helped introduce board regulations so we actually now have regulations for the Board, and we have many updates on the articles to increase resilience, reducing risk of capture, etc, etc. Then Covid came and everything that came with it and then we had the whole mess in Ukraine and the fallout we got out of that, which was sort of the direct lead up and reason for me to run for a fifth term.

Then we, of course, had to deal with the failure of governance inside of AfriNIC and when I started my final term, I had a speech and I actually kept it where I promised to work on to topics, systemic risk and organisational structure. The discussion you see on whatever the document will be called in the end, my vote is on NRO 1, Herve, if you can write a note. There's a lot going on that needs your attention and energy, so I can only please, please have a look at that, this is important stuff, it is kind of odd that ICP‑2 is sort of the root of the RIR system, and we have bottom up self‑governance and the current document that we have was not written by us and not approved by us.

So it's time to fix that.

Then on the organisational structure, I mean, I have tried to give that a bit of a push, we were having a BoF a year ago, we created some awareness and as Ondrej just mentioned just now, we have the ‑‑ with the governance training and actually starting to look at, OK, so how are we organised and how are things named and how are we going to do it? There's more work that's ongoing and I would strongly encourage any future board to keep going with that and I would very much appreciate your support to them in going through all of that.

What else. Yeah, I think that's, I mean I'm going to be around, I'm not running away from this community. It's going to be exciting to just be a participant in a RIPE meeting next time for the first time in 15 years and just that, nothing to do, just sit there, consume and look at what's going on, that's been a very, very very long time.

The final thing I will end with is my platform, my election pitch, back in 2010 and there's a couple of people in the room who were there then as well and they may remember it, is I promised to make the general meeting shorter.

And the reason for that was I was hogging the microphone for a good 20 minutes per general meeting just asking nasty questions to the Executive Board. As I will no longer be on the Executive Board, this is your word of warning. And with that, I'd like to thank everybody, I'd like to thank all of you for your support over all the years, I would like to thank all of the staff for all of their exceptional support. And yeah, that's it. Thank you.

(APPLAUSE.)

(STANDING OVATION.)

ONDREJ FILIP: He will be definitely missed in the Board.

Good, so there was the pleasant part and now we have the question and comments, so please go to the microphone if you have something you would like to ask or comment, feel free.

OK. Monitoring the chat, right. So... it seems there is one question there.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: There were two questions that were submitted in advance of the general meeting, the first question: I have been asking this question for three years in a row and nothing has been done. This year we spent almost 1.5 months searching for a payment method to the NCC, every year it gets harder and harder to go through sanctions to pay contributions. Will something be done about the possibility of paying contributions, not through euro banks outside the EU? If the NCC does nothing, can it make some exceptions on payment end dates for payments from countries under EU sanctions as it was done for Ukraine.

ONDREJ FILIP: We agree the treasurer will answer the question. Raymond.

RAYMOND JETTEN: OK. First of all, thank you for your questions and we have been able to go through them, I will try to answer as much as we can, we have seven... of which 25 only are still open. So 98% of them were paid, there was 80% were done by credit card. So we have not decided yet on the possibilities for payments for other currencies or countries but of course we are looking into these possibilities. Everyone can apply for extension payments so if there is a solution for you, please use it but it seems that the credit card payments to very successful. So on the financial... question, we have regular meetings with our... partner and we are certainly aware that if something will happen, they would inform us on time and in a timely manner and we will update our policies for that. Thank you.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: There's a second question. But before that, there was some reports on chat that the microphone that Raymond was using was not fully audible. If you are following remotely, please open the stenography transcript as well, which is live.

The second question, is the NCC going to do something ahead of the upcoming financial crisis. How prepared are we for possible restrictions on the movement of the dollar and the euro. You were planning to set up brancheses in Dubai, is there any movement.

RAYMOND JETTEN: Actually just to answer that question, before the question was even asked. So, sorry about that.

ONDREJ FILIP: Excellent, so we have traditional question on financial crisis, Hans Petter please.

HANS PETTER HOLEN: And for the Dubai, I gave a brief update on that.in my recent presentation, and we will give more information on that in due course.

ONDREJ FILIP: Excellent, thank you. Any other questions, comments, I can see... please.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: ... I just want to say thanks for, I guess, financial department and Director for making possible to pay dues invoices in pieces, I did ask for that, it was done and now I was affected how this national bank saying you should pay, this people in Amsterdam too much at once, you can now pay them in smaller parts and still get things done, I am very happy for that.

ONDREJ FILIP: Thank you for that feedback, that's really great. Thanks.

OK. I don't see anything so I think we can move to the next agenda point, which is presented by Simon Jan.

SIMON‑JAN HAYTINK:

So, sorry about that. Is the sound OK? Hello all, my name is Simon Jan from the RIPE NCC, I just want to start with a quick thank you for Remco of your 15 years of service and I am grateful that I am able to enjoy the fruits of your work as former treasurer. And I am already looking forward to your questions at RIPE 91.

Because I like accounting and numbers, this is my ninth time presenting at the GM and my fifth financial report presentation.

So let's get into it. To start the most important message of this presentation initially I wanted to read out this text but Remco his words cannot state it any better, accountancy you pay to be picky have not found anything to pick on, meaning an unqualified opinion, so.

Key messages from the 2024 financial report. Income and costs are under budget. We do not have a solution for ULTRA high risk countries as of yet, we have negative operating results which explains why there's no redistribution, we had a strong return on our clearing house reserves allowing us end 2024 with positive result of 385,000 which will be added to reserves and due to the negative am operational result, we do not have a payable corporate income tax position.

Our financial strategy, we have a not‑for‑profit funding model and we operate on a cost recovery basis. Our funding strategy aims 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 financial update. Our financial performance for 2024: Income is 6% under budget, costs are under with 5% and LIR accounts at 20,999 and 2% under budget and a handsome result of 0.9 million euros, 126% more than budgeted.

Sop to tell the story in numbers. Income under budget with 2.3 million euros. Costs under budget with 1.9, a negative operating result of 518,000 euro, meaning we have a shortage of membership funds for 2024. A very handsome financial result of 903,000 euro, resulting in an overall surplus of 385,000 euro, over which we do not have to pay any corporate income tax and this will be added to clearing house reserves.

The balance sheet.

Overall we have a very steady balance sheet. The balance value is increasing on a yearly basis due to the ultra risk income, we cannot record in our profit and loss statement, two changes in the balance sheet which are highlighted on the slide, financial fixed assets and the total current receivables.

First item the financial fixed assets now consist of only two elements, long‑term investments at fair value, currently consisting of government bonds only, which are held until maturity.

Our managed investment portfolio has been reclassed, furthermore we have an investment in subsidiaries, 13,000 euro or 50,000 A ED, this represents the share capital.....

And current assets. New here are short‑term investments at fair value which is the total investment portfolio. On advice of EY, we have reclassed our investment portfolio managed by. ..as this portfolio is actively traded as a more short‑term character and moved from the financial fixed assets to current receivables in 2024 which explained the significant increase.

Additionally you will again see the yearly increase in miscellaneous receivables due to the income from ultra high‑risk countries.

Capital and liabilities, a steady clearing house reserve over the years. The 385,000 surplus will be added to clearing house reserves increasing from 32.7 to 33.1 million euros.

Other current liabilities also increased again due to the same ultra high‑risk countries.

All in all happy to report a healthy balance sheet yet again, but we need to keep a critical eye on the growing balance position of the ultra high‑risk income on the balance sheets.

Moving on to our income. The income details, a total of 35.7 million euro, 6% under the 38 million budget. 34.1 million in membership fees compared to 36.9 in 2023. With 20,991 active LIR accounts at year end, a reduction of 579 accounts compared to 2023.

For the members, the decrease was 84 in 2024.

First reason for being under budget on income are the ultra high‑risk countries. Sign‑up fees are at 900,000 compared to 800,000 in 2023. We had considerable less new LIRs than budgeted in 2024 which is the second reason for being under budget on income.

For 2025, we have significantly reduced the budget for new LIRs accordingly, RIPE meeting income was 17% under budget and other income which was mainly sponsorship ever slightly under budget with 1%.

New LIR accounts and closures. We do see continued interest in the membership of the RIPE NCC, as shown by the inflow of new LIRs an average of 80 per month.

Looking at the closures, we see continued closing. Reasons for closure of an LIR are the are nonpayment, closure upon request of the member or due to policy violations and the majority are members with multiple LIR accounts, consolidating these accounts. But this number is significantly lower than in 2023.

Members and LIRs, starting points in 2024 with 21,517 and at the end of the 20,991, so I continued reduction in LIR accounts at forecasted lower than in 2023, looking at members, we started the year with 20,077 and 19,993,members at the end of the year showing a stable trend.

Ongoing issue for us with the membership fee at risk, I do not expect this needs much explanation, as this story has started back in 2021. We have invested time and effort to improve the relationship with our banks oaf the last years and I am happy to state that we have an open dialogue with them concerning any solution which is really positive. But unfortunately we do not have a solution at this point in time.

We continue to investigate all possibilities of our while remaining conscious of the potential risk associated with with any solution in regards to ultra high‑risk countries as defined by Dutch banks, for Ukraine and areas in distress, we have issued the invoices and provided them with the opportunity to request a payment extension and finally for any member who may have a potential sanction, we have postponed invoicing the member until they are confirmed to be free of sanctions.

The membership fee at risk quantified. Overall at year end, we have just under 4 million euro at risk. 3.6 million from ultra high‑risk countries and 161 euro from the Ukraine.

For both sanctions and Ukraine, we do see slow but sure reduction of this outstanding total.

Payment behaviour. As always we can report positive payment behaviour. We do see still see payments coming from the Ukraine and the online partial payment option for members has been well received by the members but we have not yet seen a lot of use of it so far.

Moving on to expenditures 2024.

Total expenditures have been 36.3 million, 5% under 38.2 million budget, payroll and personnel expenses under budget with 1% or 149,000 euro.

We employed 182.9 FTE and 3.8 employees of record leaving a total of 186.7 average for 2024 compared to a budget of 192.3.

Other operating expenses are 12% under budget at 12.5 million and depreciation and bad debt, 11% under at 977,000.

I wanted to share this visualisation of the spread of the RIPE total expenses, to put our expenses into perspective, the majority of the costs are personnel related with 62% of the total.

And the two next biggest cost categories are information technology with 10% and consultancy with 8%.

To zoom in on the budget variance, we are 1.95 million under budget. Two categories are over budget, housing and insurances and IT infrastructure. And all other cost cut categories are under budget with outreach and engagement standing out, the two over budget items, 143,000 over budget in housing and assurances, explained by the delay in higher than expected utility costs over 2023, received in 2024.

Additionally for 2024, we assumed a similar cost level to 2023, explaining this variance. Our landlord is the Dutch train operator, just like the trains, it's not surprising they are late with their invoices.

86,000 over budget in information technology, this is explained by the delay in data centre reductions but these costs have been offset by less over expenses than budgeting.

An under spend in outreach and PR, significant part explained by the two RIPE meetings that were a lost more cost efficient than budgeted, a 450,000 euro underspend and internal efforts to reduce costs.

Also at the time we made the budgets, the RIPE meeting locations were unknown and I am happy to share that the event team is now back on track with the locations ensuring future RIPE meeting budget will be more realistic. Overall 1.9 million under spend, which does show our continued effort to be efficient with costs while remaining focused on effectiveness.

Although not disclosed in this level of detail in the financial report, the Executive Board has asked me to give more details on the RIPE NCC's IT costs.

Total costs are 3.7 million, including 123,000 euros in capital expenditure. Starting at the top right, hardware, 4% of total expenses. Then associated with the hardware IT support and maintenance contracts at 9.6%. Software licences, 32.6% and these include all licences, example are financial administrative system, which is a... solution, we pay a licence fee to use their software. Business licences at 4.3%, mainly our sanction compliance tools, we pay for information and less for the use of the software.

IT housing with 26.8% refers to the server location rental including utilities which are mainly energy costs, connectivity are the charges to connect the server locations to our network and lastly we have equipment rent with 2.5% he which refers to the rental costs of... and lastly, Cloud expenses with 16.8%, these are the costs we pay directly to our Cloud providers.

The 2024 related parties. Focus is on out‑going fund and these have all been in line with our regular business. As you all will have known, CZ.NIC has been our host host so thank you for that. Moving on to treasury.

Overall positive financial result of 903,000 euro to year to date which is a 2.8% return on our reserves, it's significantly better than at 23 result of 524,000, of this 903,000 return, 470,000 euro is interest income, we paid about 70,000 euro in fees in relation to a managed portfolio, 54,000 to investment manager and... then we have a 547,000 positive reevaluation and negative exchange result of 44,000 euro.

Our investment portfolio as per year end, total portfolio valued at 18.8 million euro, long‑term investments at fair value, 2.5 million and these are the government bonds, and short‑term investments at fair value at 16.3 million and this is managed by our investment manager.

Cash held with banks, 16.1 million, overall of 2.8% on the clearing house, the 2022 results on the managed portfolio was 4.3% or 527,000 euro.

As requested at the last general meeting, I checked with our investment manager if we can disclose the portfolio composition as year end 2024, they agreed. Details in this overview include an ESU rating, SFDR six are funds without sustainability scope while the SFDR 8 are funds that promote enviornmental and social characteristics. Our portfolio consists of three main parts, of which the first one is shown on this slide.

These are money market funds. Go of this part of the portfolio is portfolio liquidity and reduction of volatility. At year end, this was 39.9% of the portfolio.

Second part of our managed portfolio was 30% at year end, this part is called fixed income core, goal of this part of the portfolio is reduce volatility and increase the expected return.

The third part consists of 26%, and it's called fixed income satellite, the goal of this part is increase the expected return and portfolio diversification.

At the very bottom you also see a cash part of 4.1%, as this is an actively managed portfolio, we can expect when mutations are processed, there will be a temporary cash position.

.

Moving on to the overall results.

The P&L as per year end 2024. Under budget and income and under budget and expenses, negative operational result and in line with the 2024 redistribution vote, this means no redistribution over 2024.

Financial result of 900,000 and the end result is we still were able to add 385,000 euro to our reserves.

And now my favour slide the capital and liquidity slide, we remained balanced and healthy, clearing house prove of 33.1 were million to respond to uncertainties, we are in a solvent and robust position financially, membership fees remain a concern... and our treasury will allow us protect our reserves and possibly ease the value of our reserves over time.

Next a quick update of April 2025

Our key messages for 2025. Our budget is 41.1 million and on income, 40 million for expenses. I do expect a positive operational result of 1.4 million euro over 2025 which will of course be subject to a redistribution vote at RIPE 91.

The charging scheme task force work is ongoing and we hope and expect to provide a vote for a new charging scheme in to 26 for the 27 charging scheme. Member development team stable at 20,000 and the current LIR count is 21051, unfortunately the ultra high risk issues do continue but we are doing what we can to find a solution.

We have established a legal entity in Dubai, a next step in the professionalising of our Dubai presence, this LOC could potentially provide additional options to solve the issue e have, the issues we have. And lastly continued instability in our service region which remains a concern.

Income is on budget, costs are under with 11% and we have 5% more active LIR counts when we budgeted for in 2025, only negative item is our financial result which is currently 50% under budget.

The financial story so far.

Income at 13.7, 0.4% over budget, a net increase of 60 LIRs and 126 members. ']

Expenditures at 11% under budget as per April, we have a surplus including financial result of 2.1 million euro compared to a budget of 850,000.

Failing to receive payments from ‑‑ financially speaking we have one primary concern which is marked at high risk, failing to receive payments from areas in ultra high‑risk and sanctioned members and ultra high‑risk countries, we have more active LIR accounts than budgeted, meaning our income is on budget.

The income details. Annual fees with 13.3%, 1% better than budget, sign‑up fees are at 260,000 euro which is 30% better than budget. RIPE meeting currently income at zero, this event is in period five, other income, which is mainly sponsorship, is 51,000 euro and currently under budget.

New LIR accounts and closures. In 2025, again we see new LIR applications, about 70 to 80 a month. Closures seem to be stable but as every year I do expect an increase in closures at the year end, mainly due to the consolidation of members' multiple LIR accounts.

Again just a trend of the members and LIR accounts. We do still see a downward trend of in the LIR accounts but the member numbers look stable, my forecast for 2025 is the number will slowly but surely continue to go down to eventually match the number of individual members.

Payment behaviour, as always positive payment behaviour and since 2021 the same trend can be seen, we have not yet closed any LIR account due to nonpayment but we have 190 LIR accounts that can potentially be closed due to not paying their invoice. This is under 1% of our total LIR accounts.

There's still outstanding invoices from to 2024 to 2024 relate to areas in distress, but the majority relates to the Ukraine. With regard to the 2025 payment extensions for areas in distress, we grant extensions, for Israel we have one approved and five outstanding invoices, Lebanon seven, Palestine four and Russia one, Ukraine has 52 approved payment extensions and there are 109 unpaid invoices. Again, to quantify the membership fee at risk at this point in time, it's 5.7 million euro, a 1.7 million euro addition in 2025.

This does indeed remain a concern and we are doing what we can to find a solution.

The 2025 expenditure April year to date, total expenditure 11.7 million, 11% under budget, payroll and personnel expenses under budget with 9%, we employ 181.4 FTEs and five employees of record totalling 186.1, which is the main reason for being under budget on personnel costs. Other operating expenses are 14% or 632,000 under budget at 3.9 million euro and depreciation and bad debt with the 12% under budget at 301,000.

Moving on to the budget variances, as for April, we are 1.4 million euro under, with personnel costs being the most significant. All other cost categories, except housing and bank charges, are under budget, housing and insurances is very minor 6,000 euro over budget and bank charges 23,000. But I fully expect this will even out over the year.

Treasury. Overall post the financial result of 134,000 to date in line with our risk profile and intent of the treasury institutes and the current financial market. To protect ‑‑ sorry, which is to protect our reserves while trying to generate a reasonable return. Of this 134,000, 61,000 is interest income and includes any expenses related to our investment portfolio. We have 118,000 euro positive results in our investment portfolio but unfortunatley we have a negative result on our exchange differences of 45,000 euro.

To provide an overview of our managed portfolio since inception, the left part of this slide shows at the end of 2023, we deposited 10 million euro and around May 2024, we added and additional 5.7 million euro, the result since inception, we have generated 687,000 euro. The forecasted value of our portfolio for 2025 year‑end will be 16.7 million, meaning we generated just under a million euro of forecasted value to be added since inception. Then on the right of the slide, the 2025 year‑to‑date performance of our portfolio, please note these returns exclude any management or transaction fees. In April, 30,000 euro and year to date, 141,000, the forecasted result for 2025 is about 425,000 euro.

Then the April overall result and full year forecast, so start with the summarization of the April numbers. The year to date posted operational result of two million euro, financial result of 134,000, meaning a total surplus of 2.1 million as per April. For the 2025 full year forecast, income, I expect to be slightly over budget, and I am forecasting an increase in spending for the remainder of the year. My forecast is to go on budget at 40 million euro for the expenses, which will result in a forecasted operational result of 1.4 million euro which will be subject to the redistribution vote at RIPE 91.

To move back to the main topic of this presentation, the 2024 financial report.

A clean audit once again, the financial report provided a true and fair view of the financial position of the RIPE NCC over 2024.

And just a short recap: Negative operating result, no redistribution, a strong return on our reserves which ensured an overall surplus which will be added to our reserves.

And with that, we come to the first resolution. The general meeting adopts the RIPE NCC financial report 2024 and the voting will take place under Agenda Point 10.

And with that, I would like to open the floor for any questions.

(APPLAUSE.)

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: We have a question online from Robert Check, GMBH: Do you see realistic chance of ever collecting fees from ultra high‑risk countries? I have fears that the affected members will receive an ultra high invoice somewhere in the future, that maybe might not be able to pay.

There's a second question: For how long is the RIPE NCC legally able to keep these outstanding fees collectible? What happens if members from ultra high‑risk countries and the membership for RIPE NCC has been able to collect the fees successfully, will the fees then be lost forever?

SIMON‑JAN HAYTINK: To that last question, I would have to say that is probably the realistic scenario, although even if they are closed, we will attempt to collect those funds but realistically the chance of that, us being able to collect those funds is on the low side. There were a lot of questions, could you repeat the first question for me please.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Do you see any realistic chance to collect the fees from ultra high‑risk countries successfully.

SIMON‑JAN HAYTINK: I think we have been working on this quite hard for the past few years, we are taking small steps in coming closer to a solution but I do think there are a lot of steps still to be taken, so...

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: How long is the RIPE NCC able to keep these fees collectible?

SIMON‑JAN HAYTINK: I honestly do not ‑‑ I do not know.

HANS PETTER HOLEN: If I can add to that. Each year we have to discuss this with our financial auditors in our financial report and the likelihood of collecting the funds increases, we will write it off from the balance sheet, you will see over time there that if this goes on for a long time, it will be very unlikely that we can collect it.

Now we are using very proximate work share how we score a very long time because we do not want to make the decision to write this off and we do not want to have the hard decision of what do we do then with the members in these countries if we cannot ever collect money from them and that is a very tough decision that we may be facing some time in the future. We have not given up yet. Whether we are too naive in today's world or whether there is realistic light at the end of the tunnel, I can't give a good answer to that.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: There is a second online question... will the laws of the Netherlands allow us to transfer part of our reserves to a new branch in Dubai and place funds not in euros, will be there taxes because of this?

HANS PETTER HOLEN: Yes and yes. So we have already transferred some money to capitalise the entity in Dubai, so it's able to pay its bills as we make it fully operational and, of course, money earned in the Netherlands are subject to Dutch taxation, whether we put them in a Dutch bank account or whether we transfer them abroad, so the Dutch are pretty good at collecting income tax. This is not trying to circumvent income tax in the Netherlands.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I am Pavel from ... and I would like to say... concerns I personally raised on previous GM about having clear distribution, what kind of funds we have invested in and I am pleased to see it's invested properly and I would like to thank you for providing the details, the distribution of ways how actually RIPE NCC funds, uses funds for different IT assets, different types of expenses. And I am ‑‑ I wasn't being ‑‑ sorry about it, can you scroll down to the slide which explained the change in compensation for executive team. Can you scroll down back to your slide which actually covers change in compensation for executive team.

SIMON‑JAN HAYTINK: There was no...

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I am talking about staff expenses.

SIMON‑JAN HAYTINK: I don't think I presented on changing compensation for the executive ‑‑ well, I know for a fact that I I didn't. In the financial report we do state the management team's remuneration in total.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: OK, OK, good, but I had a question about because what I noticed at the last four years, growth of compensation for executive team, was arranged between 15% and 23% but average for... and Netherlands was around 4% and my question is what is the reason why growth of compensation in executive team is actually two or three times larger than the industry average for Netherlands? Thank you.

SIMON‑JAN HAYTINK: Well, from the financial report we do disclose remuneration for 2024 that has been 2.1 million and the year before that was 1.9 million, but that increase was linked to an addition of one executive team member, the previous CRO, who started in Q3 2023 and left in Q4 2024.

So I hope that answers your question.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Partially. And I would say it's more about more transparency about compensation for key people in the organisation would be great, because those level of compensation, it's way higher for industry standards and some people may have some concerns about having this kind of compensation, I do understand that it's a ...job and... but I would be certainly honoured to know numbers because then i can be sure that they compensated fairly for their... it would be great to have this information in financial accounts.

SIMON‑JAN HAYTINK: I think we share the salary broad bands within the annual report if I am not mistaken.

HANS PETTER HOLEN: I don't have the numbers you are referring to in front of me, so it's very difficult to comment on them, I can look at my own salary letter for 2023 and say that I was very thankful for having a 3% increase on my salary, so that's in line with the policy for staff in general. So where the numbers of 10% that you come from, I am not sure. I think that's related to changes in numbers of FTEs and part‑time, part of the year and so on. But I'm more than happy to sit down and look at this in detail.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: That's actually why it would be great to have this kind of information in... the report, I would say it's one of the most important parts with, again, expenses for personal costs is a half of budget and again executive compensation is a large fraction of this quite, a quite a large fraction of budget and it would be great to have nice attention to focus on this information provided... in a transparent way for members.

HANS PETTER HOLEN: When you are saying "this information" do you mean the individual executive? Remuneration or the group in total?

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: You know me very well, I am looking for... sometimes it may be too invasive for a personal, a person's personal circumstances and if you can expose the ranges saying from X and Y, between one hundred and two hundred or between two hundred and three hundred, it would be still be a good, source of information, otherwise... some days you have to guess and it may not have proper conclusions another time because lack of information causes speculation and if you have it, to speculate, we trust you.

HANS PETTER HOLEN: We did include the salary scales in our latest report so I think you can find the sort of the the mid point of the scales there so you can kind of guess roughly what my salary is. I do realise that in some larger corporations they are providing full transparency on board remuneration or executive remunerations, we have looked into those laws do not apply to us because of our size yet, we still up for discussion whether we should you know be overly transparent and do that ourself although I actually have to talk to the staff members that I am revealing the salary information for to make them entirely comfortable with that. I am not against it from a personal point of view but yeah, in Norway it's to the level that you can actually log into the portal and see what I pay in tacks and what my net worth is so on, they make lists in the newspapers about that.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: That's amazing to hear and handle it and you cannot go that far, but something in between would be great.

And a second question is who did the accounts and ‑‑ audited accounts, RIPE budget is kind of my bad table book, I read it all the time. But we have company which lavishly pay to make audited for accounts and we have quite I would say... about their findings, what is the issues which prevents us actually seeing audit from independent auditor? Like we see budget, because, again, it's independent, very qualified people, which cost a lot of money. I mean, personally for me, it would save my time in take checking numbers and checking laws by hand, if we can see it, not complete version of it but summarised, short without having too much confidential information which may be of course presented and it's a document I would love to see, when it's redacted, don't expose people and some confidential part and I would say for transparency for our association in general. So, if you ‑‑ do have any plans to publish it?

HANS PETTER HOLEN: We do publish an audited financial report with the auditor's statement in.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: That's correct, but I am talking about complete report from auditors, not a brief report but everything they found and everything they are concerned about and everything they highlighted and everything they suggested, it's a huge document and I don't think that was it.

HANS PETTER HOLEN: OK, you are returning to the internal auditor's report which we did have a look at and they have a clause that's it's only for the client's eyes, we would have to discuss with them how we can make that widely available.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: That would be great.

HANS PETTER HOLEN: So yeah. I won't promise to do that but let's look into it and see what's possible.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Thank you very much. Thank you.

SIMON‑JAN HAYTINK: I want to repeat the auditors provided an unqualified opinion meaning they have not found anything to make an issue out of. I am not sure who was next? .

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Again so this year RIPE NCC rejected my sponsorship for the RIPE community meeting as a lot of people here already probably know, on the ground of a pack RIPE NCC have a territory exclusivity with another company, a different continent, having a fight and a dispute with a different company; which I own, which is, that dispute has mostly come to a conclusion which today there's a publication my company is a shareholder and a company of that entitity, that's unrelated. The thing is RIPE as a community should it be open and transparent and RIPE NCC being platinum sponsorship I believe over the RIPE community meeting, does it have the right to reject another sponsorship and add another layer of complicity into antitrust matters of potential abuse monopolistic positions. And also we are running into a deficit, I mean I offered RIPE NCC a million euro per year if RIPE NCC changes RIPE Atlas to Larouse Atlas, it's just a name change, you got additional million euro per year for your budget, and that offer was turned down and this year my sponsorship requests were entirely rejected while my competition was allowed to be the sponsoring here so what's financial officer saying on this or is it more of a political matter which requires Hans' response?

SPEAKER: Hello. This is Athena, Chief Legal Officer of the RIPE NCC. I'd like to clarify that we have no obligation to accept all sponsorship offers that we receive. And leave it there. Thank you.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: You do reply us...

(APPLAUSE.)... for the reasons of the rejection which my antitrust lawyer is looking to into deeper of that, that's abuse of monopolistic position, Athena. ... and I mean if the more... would kindly approve my law firm to analyse for the RIPE lease would be much appreciated as as soon as possible, but everybody will be seeing that... in the RIPE list with you you do reply on a very detailed basis and that's potentially, that's up to the court, that this year's antitrust matter could have cost RIPE NCC or its reserves, if not more. I am not threatening you. I am not threatening anyone.

The thing is RIPE can get out of this pretty easily. RIPE can be free to reject sponsorship at any point any time if RIPE recognises member rights and a number of probability so say yeah, any of its members not happy with RIPE, they can change to another RIR or there can be 10‑20 RIR with full competition the whole case would be moot. If you can be RIPE community or other community all around the world to do the number registrations very much like on unpopular here but like DNS world, feel free to choose which registrar to do things you want, not like today's situation where you have territory exclusivity and all that. You can get out of this situation and you are free to reject my sponsorship in time by recognising the rights of the members, you don't have to defend the lawsuit, you just have to change.

ATHENA: Right, thank you for your comment, we hear you, you are just for the record, your comment includes many assumptions and accusations. For the record, we don't agree with them, but I do not want to go into the details, I don't want to address them. We cannot comment publicly on individual cases, but thank you very much for your comment; we note it.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Thank you very much.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Hi, Ben from BGP tools. My question is around your investment profile and someone previously mentioned if a 2008 recession style happened, what is the longer term risk to RIPE and their investments? Would it be a really big problem for RIPE or a small problem for RIPE if that was to happen? A similar style obviously.

SIMON‑JAN HAYTINK: If a financial crisis were happen, I think it kind of depends.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: It's very vague.

SIMON‑JAN HAYTINK: I honestly don't have the knowledge to actually provide that input. I would need to know the scope of the financial crisis: Is it Europe? Is it the world? I do know that what Raymond also referred to is we do get frequent updates from our investment partner, so if they were to foresee any crisis happening, they would be sure to inform us and adjust the portfolio, if at all possible accordingly.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I guess the root of my question is: How much is RIPE relying on the funds invested in that portfolio for its continued existence or its safety?

SIMON‑JAN HAYTINK: At this moment our income is sufficient to cover all our yearly costs and I do not see that changing any time soon, but that's of course more forecast than a fact.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I understand that, thank you.

SIMON‑JAN HAYTINK: You are welcome.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Hi... I have just one question for you, thank you for your report, I have been coming to your meetings I think for years and for three years you use exactly the same phrase: We just established an entity in Dubai. And it's going to help us with high‑risk payments and something else. So was anything done in three years? Any success?

HANS PETTER HOLEN: Thank you very much for that question, it's an excellent question.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I just saw the costs for having a company in Dubai, that's all.

HANS PETTER HOLEN: So, the company was formally set up last year, all the bureaucracy around establishing banks accounts and so on was first finalised this year. Things take time and they are very keen on forms to be filled in on paper and a lot of things to ‑‑ which is a great contrast to the Facebook ads I get when I go there saying that you can do anything digitally and it's just a click away.

Could we have done this quicker and faster? Sure, but we have an operation to run as well so this hasn't had the top priority. Whether or not the entity in Dubai can solve payments from ultra high‑risk countries or not, I honestly cannot give you an answer to that. It may and it may not, we are looking into several possible ways of doing this and there are risks associated with all of them in different ways.

So you know, to some extent, I don't really want to discuss some of those proposals in public either because getting involved in the most creative ones would definitely be something that people would look at as oh, that is not according to the standards we want to be so has something been done, yes, should it have been done quicker, probably. So yeah, we will keep you updated.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Thank you.

HANS PETTER HOLEN: Any other questions? If not, thank you so much,

SIMON‑JAN HAYTINK: You are welcome.

(APPLAUSE.)

ONDREJ FILIP: Thank you very much. I am sure Simon enjoyed it, so many questions as always welcome, so I have much simple task and this is the annual item which is always on our agenda and that's the discharge of the Executive Board. I know it's unclear for many of you in many other jurisdictions this instrument does not exist, so I know it's complicated to understand but there is a link and there's also a link on the general meeting website where you can see all the very detailed explanation of this procedure and also extremely great explanation delivered by Athena during the GM in May 2024, it's just five minutes, look at it and it completely explains the procedure.

So by discharging the Executive Board, you say that their actions as described in the annual and financial report have not damaged the association. Nothing more. It doesn't discharge the Board from other actions they did and also by the... that was caused by some individuals, so this is the purpose of this.

So with that, I would just read the resolution.

Resolution number two, the General Meeting discharges the Executive Board with regard to its actions as they appear from the annual report 2024 and financial report 2024.

And the voting will be an agenda number and we'll give an explanation how to vote. So any question?

Excellent, it seems that you already all know this procedure, thank you very much.

So next is the presentation by Peter Hessler I guess. Apologies, Kevin, it's my fault. Kevin, please.

KEVIN BRENNAN: Hello everybody, my name is Kevin Brennan, I am legal counsel at the RIPE NCC and I will lead you through the resolutions to update the RIPE NCC conflict arbitration procedure. As you heard there's quite a few of them, so I will go through them in detail now.

The last time the arbitration procedure was updated was back in October 2017, RIPE at RIPE 75 in Dubai. Since that time, we have seen eight arbitration cases and the arbiter's panel has also made one evaluation of an IPv6 allocation request by the RIPE NCC. All these reports are published online and you can read them on the RIPE website. The arbiter's panel met annually generally at RIPE meetings and we have seen turnover of the panel, five new members appointed in May 2018 by the GM and one of the member also stepped down and Sander Stefan stepped down in May 24 after he was elected to the Executive Board.

Then in September 2024, six members of the arbiter's panel met face to face in Amsterdam, I know two of the members are at the meeting as well so Keith and Andre, very approachable and knowledgeable, if you have any questions about it, they are available for questions for whatever, if you have some interest in it it. The amendments proposed were those discussed at this meeting and, yeah, as per the articles of association, changes to this arbitration procedure must be approved by the GM.

The next slide... there we go. These are the proposed amendments in plain English, I will go through them one by one as I go through the slides.

Just starting with the first proposed amendment which is the introduction of a five‑year term of appointment for the arbiter's panel which would take place under section 31 of the arbitration procedure. So there's currently no term of appointment for the members of the arbiter's panel. The general business, the general ‑‑ to align with general business practice, we propose to introduce a term of appointment of a five‑year term, following which those members of the arbiter's panel can put themselves forward for immediate reappointment, to not disrupt the continuity of the panel, it's proposed... they have all been there for more than five years, otherwise they would have to seek reappointment at the next GM, instead the terms of the current arbiters will expire in the order of their original appointment so those appointed in 2001, their term applies until 2026, those appointed in 2010, the term expires in 2027, so on, there's ten members of the arbiter's panel currently.

This is the section of the arbiters procedure, the proposed wording is that which is in bold at the bottom, as I have explained, that we propose to introduce a five‑year term for the arbiters.

And that they will be illegible for immediate reappointment thereafter.

The second proposed amendment, the requirement for both current and future arbiters to sign a statement similar to that currently required already of the executive board candidates. Currently they don't have to submit this statement but we just want them to agree to adhere to the RIPE Code of Conduct, it's already applicable but just to keep that in mind.

And then also have them confirm they have never committed fraud or other financial misconduct in any jurisdiction and as I said previously, this is a requirement that's already required in the Executive Board candidates, basically a similar statement, and it's expected to be adhered to by both the current arbiters and future applicants for arbiters positions.

This is the proposed wording we want to add to the arbitration procedure. So it's just as I explained previously, the addition of a signed statement for both future members and current members of the arbiter's panel.

The third amendment, this is the introduction of a mechanism to initiate the dismissal of members of the arbiter's panel due too a possible conflict of interest or violation of the RIPE Code of Conduct so it will remain the case that the GM is the authority has to dismiss an arbiter, this is so the arbiter's panel can hold themselves to account if they see there's a maybe a case of a conflict of interest or one of the members has violated the Code of Conduct, they can then make a request from the RIPE NCC Executive Board if by majority decision they feel like it should go forward to the GM.

And this is the proposed wording again, under section B.2.3 of the arbitration procedure, so if if by majority decision of the full arbiter's panel, they see there's a reason to put forward such a resolution to the GM, this is the proposal essentially.

The fourth amendment, the arbitration case to be rejected if the dispute has been ruled upon by the competent court or the arbiter's panel. And an introduction of a mechanism also if the party to arbitration wants to dispute such a rejection.

So yeah, this amendment would provide a request for arbitration may be rejected if the dispute has already been ruled upon by the arbiter's panel already and it will introduce to allow a party to challenge this rejection if they believe the facts of the case have substantially changed if the rule ruling has been made by the court or the arbiter's panel made a decision and if they want to challenge the rejection of their case, a majority of the arbiter's panel will examine the question request and provide a verdict whether arbitration can proceed.

This is the proposed wording. It's essentially as I have just explained there under section C.1 under the arbitration procedure and yes, it's as I went through there previously.

The fifth amendment to that we propose to the arbitration procedure is to allow a party in arbitration to request the removal of a chosen arbiter due to a conflict of interest. Currently, there's no mechanism during an arbitration if a party thinks there's a conflict of interest, they can request it can be reviewed by the arbiter's panel, it will introduce a mechanism where they can dispute, where they can raise a request to remove the arbiter and then the arbiter's panel to check it by majority decision and see if this is valid.

This is the proposed wording change. So under section C.2.2.1 and under section C.2.2, they are related to each other. Yeah and it's potential conflict of interest and it's the same mechanism as also explained for other proposed amendments that I previously went through.

And then the final amendment that we propose to the arbitration procedure, this is to allow chosen arbiter to request notarized documents from a party in arbitration. Yeah, this one we discussed at the meeting in September, it's if arbiters have at times found it difficult, due to the size of our service region and many languages that we have, whether the accuracy and translation of a document can be relied upon so you want to introduce a mechanism to allow that arbiter to the particular case to be able to request notarization of the relevant documents, should it be required, and if the party is unable to provide or fails to do so in a period of time, then the arbiter can assume that only statements within those documents is not valid.

And I do also want to note that it is provide for in the arbitration procedure that costs up to 5,000 euro may be collected by the losing party according to section C7. So this is the proposed wording change, not a change, an addition: The arbiter may request the party to the dispute arrange for a notarization of relevant documentation and give them a period of time to fulfil this request.

One by one, there's six resolutions, I have gone through them in detail there, but these are how they appear in the agenda.

Resolution 3 is by adopting the resolution, you will agree to the addition of a five‑year term for the arbiters.

Resolution 4, the GM will agree to include wording that arbiters both current and future will have to submit a signed statement similar to that already provided by the Executive Board.

Resolution 5: By adopting this resolution the GM agrees to amend the arbitration procedure to include wording that will allow the arbiter's panel to recommend to the Executive Board that for the dismissal of a member of the arbiters panel be brought forward.

Resolution 6: By adopting this resolution, the GM will agree to amend the arbitration procedure to include wording that a request for arbitration be rejected if the dispute has already been ruled upon and also the mechanism to allow the initiating party to challenge this rejection.

Resolution 7, by adopting the resolution, the GM will agree to amend the arbitration procedure to agree wording to allow a party to dispute, a party to the dispute to request the removal of a chosen arbiter due to a credible conflict of interest.

Resolution 8, by adopting this resolution, the GM will agree to amend the arbitration procedure to include wording a chosen arbiter to an arbitration dispute may request that documentation be notarized.

So those are the six resolutions, resolutions 3 through 8, and voting takes place for the resolutions under agenda point 10. That's everything. So if there's any questions, I will happily take them now, thank you.

(APPLAUSE.)

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Hi, for amendment 5, can the arbiter vote, does he have a vote whether he has a conflict of interest or will he be excluded from voting?

KEVIN BRENNAN: Excluded from the voting, the rest of the arbiter's panel.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: But he can make his business case?

KEVIN BRENNAN: He can make his case but he doesn't have the opportunity to vote.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Thank you.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: This might be my misunderstanding of English, but the text said that up to 5,000 euro in costs can be collected by the losing party and I would think that they have to be collected from the losing party.

KEVIN BRENNAN: That might have just been a typo, but correct what you said, from the losing party, exactly.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Quick question, on the arbiter thing, can I say that all of the arbiters have conflicted interest? Can all of them go away? Because it's unclear, it says a chosen arbiter ‑‑ one? All?

KEVIN BRENNAN: The chosen arbiter to the cases as the case has already been initiated.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: OK.

KEVIN BRENNAN: I don't see any other questions, thank you very much.

(APPLAUSE.)

ONDREJ FILIP: Thank you very much, Kevin.

So now the next agenda point is the report from the co‑Chair of the charging scheme task force, Peter Hessler.

PETER HESSLER: OK, thank you very much. My name is Peter Hessler and I will give you an update from the charging scheme task force.

So as an overview, we were established by the Executive Board back in 2024, we have the following objectives: To define the principles of a future charging scheme, and to propose an improved process for the charging scheme discussions an adoption.

The task force will not discuss the RIPE NCC budget or set any actual fees or prices. I also want to clarify and highlight that this is not the charging scheme that we are voting on in this GM. This is work for the future.

Now we can see here a list of all the members, myself and Ondrej as co‑Chair, we have a number of members from the membership, we have... some members from the NCC and from the Executive Board.

14 meetings have taken place since August, the minutes of all the meetings as well as a link to the draft report with all the principles are published at the URL, if you download the slides, there's a clickable link.

The meetings operate under Chapham house rules, we record the discussion but do not record the name or affiliation of who said what.

Members, which is you here, we ask you to comment on the minutes and draft reports on members discuss mailing lists and to provide input for our discussions.

We had a presentation about this in the October general meeting. Since then, we have published our draft report containing our proposed principles in April, last month. The intention is for the members to review and provide feedback, we welcome all feedback until the end May including here at the GM and we will utilise all this information to prepare a final report to submit to the board.

So draft principle number one. Our draft principles, the general principles is that the charging scheme model should strive for equity among members by taking into account the different resources registered to members.

Equity should be seen as recognition that different members have different resources and different opportunities. The charging scheme should be based on an idea that people and organisations specific pay a significant majority of their fees to be a member of their NCC which would allow for additional charges for specific services.

The charging scheme should be as complex as it needs to be to provide equity and fairness for members while being as simple as possible to ensure clarity, predictability and administrative efficiency. We do not want to make your life difficult by making you do calculus.

And also the charging scheme model should not negatively impact the accuracy of the registry. We do not want to encourage people to underdocument their registrations.

Draft principles, the second part. We are proposing changing to a per member category versus per charging per LIR account. What this would mean for members who hold multiple LIRs, would be the combination of all of the resources would be the focus versus each separate LIR independently.

We see here a very nice graph showing the LIR account development of the number of LIRs which is the top line, versus the number of members which is the bottom line and you see there is a large divergence around peaking in 2019 and it's folding back to nearly a one to one ratio in I think we are like around 5% off right now and projecting a one to one ratio in the near future.

We are proposing a differentiation in membership fees, primarily based on the amount of PA resources held. The charging scheme model should balance the diversity of organisations, the sizes, the types, the financial capabilities, while maintaining the RIPE NCC's high standards of services and preventing a deficit.

The charging scheme proposals should also not compromise the tax agreements that the RIPE NCC has with the Dutch government.

They were currently benefitting from several agreements, we think that we should keep them.

So draft principles number four, we are proposing that we should use a category based model versus a one LIR one fee. The amount of categories should be determined by the NCC but there should be enough categories to ensure there's no significant increase from one category to the next.

The category that members are placed in should be the total PA resource holdings of the members and the category structures should also be structured in a way that discourages members from manipulating their placement to qualify for lower fees.

There should be enough categories to ensure an equitable charging scheme based on distribute of resources.

The category model should also ensure that members with a small number of resources would pay less than they would under the current one LIR account, one fee model.

The category model should ensure that only those with a large number of resources are towards the higher level categories and those closer to the median allocation size are closer to the medium level categories.

So here is a fairly graph that shows the number of IPv4 PA /24s held better account and we are not going into all the details but I want to highlight that group D which has the highest distribution includes a /22 of IPv4 address space. This here is a similar graph for IPv6, group B is a single /32 and Group E includes a /29.

The sign‑up fees should be retained for new member accounts in such a way that does not act as a barrier to entry but it should cover the administrative costs of onboarding new members and to prevent abuse.

Charging for IPv6. It should be a factor in a category braced model but we should not do it in an a way that descent advised and discourages adoption of IPv6.

Charging for independent resources, IPv4 and IPv6 PI space and ASNs, provider independent resources should be be charged separately from the members provider aggregatable PA resources in order to avoid double charging. The RIPE NCC should continue its approach of charging once on PI assignments that are made on a single day. We suggest that 1 ASN assignment should be provided to members without charge and fees applied for any additional ASN assignment, there should be no difference in how charges are applied for IPv4 and IPv6 PI space.

And that RIPE policy proposals should be put forward to align policy and assignment procedures if there's a lack of clear alignment between the two.

Here we have a similar graph, this is for IPv4 PI resources. Group A is those with zero IPv4 PI for with who are a PI that's smaller than a /24, group B is those with a single IPv4 PI space.

Similar graph for IPv6. Category A is for less than /32, which includes /48s.

Charging for legacy space holders, the charging scheme model should financially encourage space holders to welcome members of the RIPE NCC or have a contractual membership with a member of the RIPE NCC.

Holders of the legacy resources which are not covered by a contractual relationship in accordance with legacy policy should pay a fee in case the RIPE NCC is required to facilitate updates on their behalf. We'll get to a very brief explanation of that in one moment.

First is the development of the contributable requirements for status of legacy IPv4 ranges, you see legacy sponsored is going up, legacy members going up and legacy no contract, going down.

This is the number of requests that we are seeing, we are seeing MAs is, is it over the map, RIPE NCC service transfers within the region is roughly the same as it was last year, inter RIR transfers, also number and legacy specific updates, unfortunately we do not have information prior to to 2021.

Here is comparison of the registry updates. The number of tickets that are received for within the region transfers, inter RIR transfers and legacy updates, I would like to highlight the average processing time of this, you see that for within a region is 75 minutes on average. For legacy updates, it's 360 minutes, hour fours, minimum. If there is a contract and 420 minutes, seven and a half hours I believe if there is no contract. There is significant workload for anything involving legacy updates.

And unfortunately it's very difficult to automate this whole process.

Resource transfers. The NCC charging scheme should include fees for resource transfers, including mergers and accusations and legacy resource transfers to offset the cost of this activity to the RIPE NCC.

The income that the RIPE NCC receives should not conflict with the principle that the significant majority of income should come from membership fees rather than from other sources of income.

We are not recommending that this is a new untapped pool of revenue. But there should still be some costs or some fees associated with this to recover the costs.

We see here the number of policy transfers based on resource type, huge amount of IPv4 only, quite a few IPv6, IPv4 and other, with other includes either sorry, includes either v 6 or an ASN and you see the other categories. The process for charging scheme discussions and adoption. The NCC charging scheme should be designed by the RIPE NCC and proposed by the NCC Executive Board and approved by the RIPE NCC membership.

That is also the current state and we do not propose a change there.

The NCC should propose a draft charging scheme in advance of publishing a final version so that members have adequate time to give their input on this proposal.

A member based charging scheme task force should be formulated on a regular basis to ensure the charging scheme model remains fit for purpose.

We are intentionally not making a recommendation on how often if we don't, if the membership does not feel the need for a change, it would be wasted effort and we would like to avoid wasting effort.

And of course all of these principles are described in detail with quite a bit of discussion text around why and how we reach these principles in it. And I trust that everybody in the room has already read it and loves it and has memorised every word on every page.

So what are the next steps. The task force discusses all feedback we receive from members, please tell us if there's things you don't agree with, if you see things that can be improved, if you are in agreement with the principles, we are accepting input in the the end of the month, May 2025 or those of you who are unsure at which point we'll finalise the task force report to be presented to the Executive Board.

Here at the bottom, we have a link to the draft report in case you need to reference it.

And then the NCC can start drafting a draft charging scheme once our report is final and submitted.

So, thank you very much. Now we have time for questions and comments.

(APPLAUSE.)

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I have one suggestion, potential question as well, have you conceded to charge only transaction fees instead of a compulsory membership fee? So RIPE, the transfer volume is already in the billions of dollars and RIPE NCC need to just charge probably 1% of a transaction fee to survive its membership fee and then member who is holding IP address don't pay anything, have you considered that potential possibility of such?

SPEAKER: We did consider this, the task force felt it would add too much financial strain because some members, quite a few members, will be quite stable for a number of years and some will ‑‑ there could be periods of extreme activity, for example, what we have seen with the last /8 and all the 22s that are being traded. We were very concerned that this would not provide enough funding to fund the NCC.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Well then could it be possibly be a ‑ sorry ‑ hybrid model, between the membership fees and the transaction fee, let's say we start charging transaction fees and we also charge the membership fees at the same time as we currently does and by the end of the year is the transaction is enough to cover the operation cost, we could do a rebate for everybody if that will remove uncertainty concerns to be addressed ret he change of the charging model.

SPEAKER: We do recommend there is a fee for transfers, I would that much match your transaction fee that you have in mind.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: The transaction fee I am in thinking is line of the market transaction value, not an administrative fee that currently RIPE NCC is charging which will be drastically higher than today's transaction fee which is basically an addive fee.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Sorry, Clara chiming in from the task force, there's a number of reasons why we didn't go with that logics, this was also brought up by other members in terms of charging per IP, there are tax implications to consider, which I might let Simon‑Jan expand on that. Number two, this is a very volatile market and the NCC, they need stability and predictability.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Have you heard what I said? We can continue charging the fees and add the transaction fee as additional but... 1% of transaction fee of the market and there will be enough covering term year of the member as operating costs then by end of the year we effectively give a rebate of the entire year of the membership fee to the members so we don't need to pay membership fee, the transaction fee will cover the cost of operation budget at its entirety.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I just want to chime in, if I understand your proposal correctly that would be very much more a commercial organisation than a membership organisation, techically as a membership association, we are not allowed to make a profit to refund it to our members. So the more commercial we look at membership association, the further we get away from actual membership organisation, association and move towards a commercial company, and I do not think that's anything the membership ‑‑ the Executive Boards are actually considering.

SPEAKER: I would also quickly like to comment that the charging scheme task force is tasked with making recommendations to the Executive Board and they are free to act upon that. So this is not something that we directly can control.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Of course. My last comment before I go is that the membership fee is a compulsory tax on every internet user and if we have to charge it because everybody has to pay and because of that, a transaction fee seems to be a much fairer model so if people just using that space, especially less developed countries, that would be much better for them because they don't have to pay anything and the tax on each individual user would be much better and it mostly ‑‑ the rich guy toll buy an IP address anyway, so that will solve a lot of income disparity among the nations in this region, especially that's pretty high at this point. Thank you.

SPEAKER: OK, thank you very much.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: We have a question online from... why do you persist in ignoring the proposal to charge proportionally for scarce resources, namely IPv4 and 16 bit AS? The bands come out again with the idea of categories, it has been written more than once and members discuss that this is a dead end that will not solve the current problem with the deficit but will only consolidate it. By being persistent in your approach, you discredit yourself. Try to offer something new.

SPEAKER: So thank you very much for the comment. We have also considered a per IP based charging scheme and that runs some risks of potentially violating Dutch law and membership organisational law by focusing too much of the revenue from too few of the members. And that's something we have to be careful about.

BRIAN NISBET: This is absolutely a comment. I want to say thank you for this work, I think there's a few bits of very big work that are happening in the NCC and in the community at large and I think this is a vital piece of work. I think it has been a very interesting experience to read the minutes and watch the sausage being made as we work through it. I know I looked at it and went where are they going with this, with this little thing and I think it's very clear that you took the feedback and I think there's more opportunity and I would encourage anybody who hasn't as you know to read the document and to give the feedback and I really like the principles you have come up with and I am sure I will, I have more in the mention couple of weeks but overall, good stuff and I am very interested to see what proposals the Board will come up for the charging scheme so thank you.

SPEAKER: Thank you very much. Do we have any other comments?

ONDREJ FILIP: I don't see any, thank you very much for such a detailed and descriptive presentation, thank you.

(APPLAUSE.)

ONDREJ FILIP: With that, we move to the agenda point number 8, while this time we are discussing a little bit for the future, Simon‑Jan will talk about the charging scheme for the next year, 2026 ‑‑ Simon Jan.

SIMON‑JAN HAYTINK: Hello. Here I am again, this time I promise to keep it a lot shorter than my previous one. But before I start it I just want to point to the GM to the 2025 activity plan and budget document on page 5 we have published a 2024 salary scales and a break down of the average employee related costs.

So to be as clear as I can be. The 2026 charging scheme which is to be voted on by you at the GM is exactly the same as the 2025 charging scheme so no change at all.

To start with the definition of the annual fee: 1800 euro per LIR account, 75 euro per independent internet number resource assignment and 50 euro per ASN assign and a separate sign up to of a thousand euro to open an LIR account of a muember or for an additional LIR account for an existing member.

And then the price list, as said, no changes from 2025, all fees stay the same.

So if there is no change, why are we submitting the 2026 charging scheme for a vote? Well, we have a formal requirement by our articles of association to have the adoption of the charging scheme for the coming financial year on the agenda of the GM.

In this case, your vote does have very limited impact, as approval will result in no change, as will rejecting the charging scheme will result in no change. We did have similar votes in the past as we had an annual or membership fee per LIR for 1400 for, I think, eight years straight.

So just to recap on our reasoning, what our reasoning has been for submitting a no change charging scheme for 2026, we inventionly designed the 2025 charging scheme to generate sufficient income for 2025 and 2026 to ensure short‑term financial stability. This short‑term financial stability provides the member based charging scheme task force time to work on principles for a new charging scheme and we as RIPE NCC will need a bit of time to design that new charging scheme that aligns with the principles set. And lastly, providing an alternative charging scheme for a vote at this point in time could be very disruptive to the work that the task force is doing.

For your reference I added a multiple year forecast and this is based on no change in the current charging scheme and annual cost increase of 3.5% and for the 2025 forecast, I did, I do expect an overall positive result which will be subject to redistribution vote in RIPE 91.

Also we do hope that this time next year you will be voting for a new charging scheme for 2027 that aligns with the principles set. But I do hope you understand this is not an easy exercise.

And with that I come to resolution number 9, which will be voted under the next agenda point, the general meeting adopts the RIPE NCC charging scheme 2026.

And that is a very short presentation.

(APPLAUSE.)

ONDREJ FILIP: There are no questions, thank you very much. And this is the end of me leaving the Chair meeting and passing the mic to Remco van Mook.

REMCO VAN MOOK: Good. So, how does this work again, by the powers vested in me by the articles of association, since the Chair is running for reelection, the longest standing board member gets to run the GM. This is not the first time it happened to me. It will be the last time, that's good!

So, the RIPE NCC Executive Board election, we have three candidates, Randy, Ondrej and Kevin and they will all have a two‑minute video presentation and I suggest we go and watch those.

And now the exciting bits start. Are we actually going to get a video this time? Good, this looks hopeful.

(Video played) I have been in the RIPE community since the... ((APPLAUSE.))

I swear I didn't set this up. I love the music hereby the way. But I am, I know Randy Bush and I have known him for a long time, that's not what he sounds like.

No offence, Randy.

I have been in the RIPE community since the early years and I am running for the Executive Board because I care deeply about it. I feel a duty to community service and to keeping the delicate balance between the NCC being a business responsible to its members and its role of stewardship to the internet community and to civil society.

I was on on the boards of credit union and ISP and food co‑OP etc, I still hack routers and break servers. I have the t‑shirts and coffee cups, but this is no longer our parents' internet. RIPE was founded in the days when the days of centered on universities and big industry, Russia and NATO countries were trying to be friends and not just over signal. Today it's hyper scalers, CDNs, social media, law enforcement, governments and serious security concerns.

Our social and political environment has changed radically and not for the better.

In this new world, we have serious hills to climb, from fiscal responsibility to the charging scheme, props to the task force, to political fragmentation, diversity and equity, co‑ordination with other RIRs and NRO and the ICANN, data sovereignty, climate, etc.

The EB listens to our diverse community, works with the NCC staff, fosters consensus and has to make occasional hard calls, a difficult job, and to honest a bit scary. I hope to approach it with open ears and open mind, a sense of humour and humility, thanks for listening.

(APPLAUSE.)

Hello, my name is Ondrej Filip. I am based in Prague, a beautiful city that most of you are familiar with because my company CZ‑NIC hosted the previous RIPE meeting here and I have been serving you as a member of the Executive Board for six years now, last three years in the role of the Chair and I have to thank you for this opportunity, it has been a pleasure to Chair such an interesting and diverse group like you. During the period together, we achieved a lot and I am really proud of it, proud of you. So this is the third time I am standing in front of you and asking for your votes and the logical question is why.

And I believe there are a few topics that I can be helpful with:

First of all the charging scheme. As you know the Executive Board initiated the creation of a task force that tackles this issue and since the beginning, I have been co‑chairing this task force and we are very close to delivering recommendations to the board and to the members.

Second biggest topic is working on a new strategy we already started to work on this issue and we plan to finish this work next year and I'm really looking forward to discussing with you about it and this strategy will be part of a bigger picture of something that was publicly discussed and also by Remco, it's part of the future of RIPE NCC and this is a really important task and we need to change the structure, the way we operate in order to stay relevant for the future.

So if you believe that somebody with more than 20 years of experience of running a registry might be helpful in those topics, please consider voting for me. Thank you very much.

(APPLAUSE.)

Hello, my name is Kevin Maynell and I am standing for the RIPE NCC Executive Board at the forthcoming election. I have been involved with the RIPE community for more than 25 years and I previously co‑chaired a working group and served on the ENOG and. ..committees. I am currently a member of the RIPE Programme Committee and I liaise on the RIPE NomCom selecting the next RIPE Chair, the reasoning I am standing for election is that I believe the RIR system is facing a number of significant challenges, perhaps for the first time in its history.

Whilst the RIPE NCC has been less affected by some of these things and than the other RIRs, it's still been affected by the increasing consolidation of RIRs, drift collecting fees from certain sanctioned countries along with significantly increased costs in recent years. It has turned some attention towards funding models I believe need not only to be fair equitable and sustainable but must also consider which services and activities are needed looking ahead.

Of course as well as the more immediate financial challenges, there are emerging governance and regulatory challenges and I think it's important that the RIPE NCC recognises and is quickly able to adapt to an evolving political developments as well as ensure it meets current best practices for non‑profit organisations and to meet these challenges, I believe it's important to have board members without political influences or commercial interests who are motivated to act impartially and decisively in service of the membership in all parts of the RIPE region.

So I thank you for your attention and I greatly appreciate it if I was given your trust.

(APPLAUSE.)

REMCO VAN MOOK: So that was the three candidates, we have the Board elections to fill two seats and voting again takes place under agenda item number 10.

So we have had the statements and now here we go with Karla I think, there we go.

KARLA LIDDLE‑WHITE: Hi, everyone. There we are. Last presentation, I promise. Right. Here we go, a bit of admin to start. We have only got electronic voting today, both in the room and for everybody at home, there will be no paper ballots. And some voting analysis.

Now we'll have a RIPE Labs article published for you later after the GM in a few weeks' time which will crunch the numbers because I am not a numbers person, I am a words person, you don't want me talking about numbers. That's what Simon‑Jan is for. So that will be out then. There's a little graph of votes you can have a look at for registrations, but I would wait for the RIPE Labs article.

So voting on the resolutions. There are nine resolutions to vote on. All resolutions require more than 50% of the yes vote, abtensions are noted but they do not not count.

The Executive Board election. So there are three candidates and two seats. We will use instant run‑off voting for the election. You must choose at least one candidate for your vote to be counted or you can choose to abstain.

You just number the candidates in order of your preference, you don't need to number every candidate if you don't want to; you can choose one, two, three, up to you. Again, abstentions are noted but do not count.

We are using instant run‑off voting. What is that, I hear you say. Voters rank the candidates in order of preference, so you can vote your first choice, second, your third. If a candidate gets more than, if one candidate gets more than 50% of the first choice votes, they are elected to that first seat. But if no one gets that, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, votes for the eliminated candidate are then reassigned and this process goes on until we have two candidates. Who have won the vote. If this made no sense, there is a video on the website on the May 2025 GM website, which should magically be appearing in Meetecho in a minute for you, you can watch that afterwards. Yeah.

So, how do we vote? You will, you should have received two emails in your in box, one has the code you will need to go on the platform, that's your GM registration number. And the second one will have the platform label. So you will get this one and then all you have to do is click vote now, it might be a link or it might be a button, depends on your email client. Now just pop that code in that second box and away you go. You will get to, if the clicker works, this one. So there is a timer on the platform but that doesn't mean you have 40 minutes and then that's it, it goes out and then you can't vote, you can go back on the platform if it times out and you can start again.

So with that, we get to the nine resolutions you get to vote on today. You can choose yes, no or abstain, you must choose one of those options to move forward into the platform. Confirm your selection.

Now, if you have got more than one vote, you can assign them using the little toggle. Assign your votes and then confirm it.

And then you can add new ballots, you can say put five in and then add a new ballot for another five depending how many votes you have got and then you can continue doing that process for all of the votes you choose and this lovely green box will appear once you have cast your votes and you can click continue.

So the Executive Board election. So you have got the three names up there, you just tap on each of the names to put the one, two, three in the order of preference and number them this, you can also abstain if you like and as I said just now, you don't have to put them all in if you don't want to, confirm your selection using the grey box and then as I said, if you have got several votes again, you just keep going around until you can confirm and cast your vote.

Check your votes, scroll down, there's nine, you have to keep scrolling, and then once you are happy with all of that, you can submit your vote, if you weren't happy you can click the back button. So submit your vote and you can track it. So you can either scan the QR code, or on the device you can click the link and it will take to a nifty little screen where you can see what happened with your vote. And that I think is nearly done. I promise.

So, I have got some important information. You need to do, go through the entire platform for your vote to be cast. If you leave it, you do have to come back. Your email server does need to be TLS 1.2 compliant and there is a tracking pixel in the assembly voting emails, but that's just so we can send a reminder to the people that haven't done it yet tomorrow.

And as I said, there are no paper ballots.

Trouble shooting, please check your spam if you are using Safari, the pre‑filled code might not be there, you might have to put it in, that's the email address it will come from. And if you have any questions, please, please email us. And don't leave it too late, I get emails after the voting platform is closed, there's nothing I can do, so please do it sooner than later so if you do have an issue I can help you, because once it's closed, it is closed.

You can contact us. As I said, I am going to be at the help desk, so just come find me, if I am not there, ask one of my colleagues, they can ping me and I will come running to you to come and help. There's also a how‑to vote page if you don't want to watch me back telling you all of this. You can click, go on the QR code or go to the how to vote page on the GM web pages. Announcing the results, voting takes place once the Chair declares it open in a minute, you can cast your vote until 9am UTC plus one and we will announce the results on Friday at half past ten UTC plus one, it will be in here and also on the live stream link that you got with your Meetecho link.

And if the clicker worked... I will answer any questions you have.

(APPLAUSE.)

We have got one.

AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Robert asks why does assembly voting not only use EU based byte mail as in the past but also US based...

KLARA LIDDLE‑WHITE: : I don't know but I can get back to you, I can email you back for that. Sorry. Any more? I don't think so. No, I think that's me done.

REMCO VAN MOOK: Thank you, Karla.

KARLA LIDDLE‑WHITE: Thank you.

(APPLAUSE.)

REMCO VAN MOOK: I will do this bit for Ondrej, he is sitting there comfortably and this is the speed run, this is voting on resolutions in the Executive Board election, which is the part where I get to read out all the resolutions because I am somehow required to. Right. Here we go. I wish I was Irish.

Resolution 1: The general meeting adopts RIPE NCC financial report 2024.

Resolution 2: The general meeting discharges the Executive Board with regard to its actions as they appear from the annual report to 2024 and financial report 2024.

Resolution 3: The general meeting adopts the amendments to section B1 of the RIPE NCC conflict arbitration procedure. It further resolves that these amendments do not apply to the current terms of the current arbiters. Instead the terms of the current arbiters will expire in the order of their original appointment, beginning in 2026, specifically the term of the arbiters appointed in 2001 will expire in 2026, the term of those appointed in 2010 will expire in 2027, the term of those appointed in 2011 will expire in 2028 and the term of those appointed in 2018 will expire in 2029. The relevant arbiters shall be eligible for immediate reappointment accordingly.

Right. Resolution 4: The general meeting adopts the amendments to sections about 21 and B 22 of the RIPE NCC conflict arbitration procedure.

5: The general meeting adopts the amendments to sections B 23 of the RIPE NCC conflict arbitration procedure. '

6: The general meeting adopts the amendments to section C 1 of the RIPE NCC conflict arbitration procedure.

7: The general meeting adopts the amendments to sections C21 and C22 of the RIPE NCC conflict arbitration procedure.

Resolution 8: I mean it's fantastic, the stenographer is still faster than I am.

The general meeting adopts the amendments to Section C3 of the RIPE NCC conflict arbitration procedure.

And finally, resolution 9: The general meeting adopts the RIPE NCC charging scheme 2016.

Those are the nine resolutions and then we get to the main event, which is the RIPE NCC Executive Board election to fill two seats. There are three candidates, Randy, Ondrej and Kevin, and you get to pick two of them.

In the end.

And that is it for ‑‑ I declare voting open as of now. I will see all of you lovely people back in the room at 10.30 on Friday, that is 10:30 local time during the coffee break and then I will reconvene the general meeting and then after that close it. So the general meeting is now suspended.

Thank you all for your time.

(APPLAUSE.)

Coffee break.

GM results.

REMCO VAN MOOK: Hello! And good morning everyone. Welcome back to the general meeting, if you find your seat, it's now exactly 10.30 and I would like to get this over with!

Freedom looms!

This is the last splash. Here is, are we happy over there in the back or, are we just lingering, you are all good, ready to go? Yes, excellent!

Here's the voting report of the general meeting.

Well this is going to be rather dry. Resolution number one, the general meeting adopts the RIPE NCC financial report. Yes, 876, no, 92, abstain 71. The motion was approved.

Resolution 2. The meeting discharges the Executive Board, the resolution was again approved.

Resolution 3, I am not going to read it out completely again again. Approved.

Resolution 4, more amendments, resolution approved.

Number 5, unsurprisingly, approved.

Number 6, you can see a theme here. It was approved.

Number 7, more conflict arbitration procedure, the resolution was approved. I mean I am, let's see what happens next, right? !

Resolution number 8, it was approved!

Now, now comes the really exciting bit, resolution number 9 adopts the charging scheme 2026, it was approved!

And that was it, right? No? Oh. OK. And then I guess the moment you have all been waiting for and my last step towards freedom...

The Executive Board election, congratulations to our newly elected Executive Board members Randy Bush and Ondrej Philip, congratulations.

(APPLAUSE.).

Good luck and God speed to of you and with that, I declare this general meeting closed, I'd like to thank Geoff Heuston from APNIC as independent observer. That's it. I'm out!

(APPLAUSE.)

(Elvis has left the building...)

Back at 11:00