Spring Agora Patra is just around the corner and we will vote for a new Comité Directeur. After two years, we are going to have (up to) seven new faces in the CD House in Brussels. As you might remember, during Spring Agora Rhein-Neckar the current CD decided to run for another year and they were all reconfirmed. Only Szabina Hellinger and Dávid Székely, both from AEGEE-Budapest, ran for a position in the Comité Directeur, but David later withdrew and Szabina was not elected.
In Patra we will have three candidates for the position of President of AEGEE-Europe: Léa Charlet (AEGEE-Paris), Paul Smits (AEGEE-Enschede) and Réka Salamon (AEGEE-Aachen). The result still is hard to predict and we may assist to the second round of voting between the two who received the highest amout of votes. According to the CIA (Corpus Iuridicum Aegeense ed.), in the current case, where there is more than one candidate, the new Presidente of AEGEE-Europe must be elected with the absolute majority. With three candidates, reaching the 50% + 1 of the preference is unlikely to be reached. So most probably, there will be a need to vote a second time. For the second election candidates will need only a simple majority.
At first the choice of the Secretary General of AEGEE-Europe seemed simple, with Matthijs Overhaal (AEGEE-Tartu) as the sole candidate. However, the application of Antonija Parat (AEGEE-Zadar) reopened the games. Here the same rule as for the President: absolute majority is needed. With two candidate the majority will probably be reached already in the first voting. Tercio Terencio (AEGEE-Genova) submitted his application for Secretary of AEGEE-Europe on the 22nd of April, but it still have to approved by the Juridical Commission.
Among the regular CD members, we can choose four out of five candidates: Aleksandra Kluczka (AEGEE-Kraków), Bartosz Sudorowski (AEGEE-Zielona Góra), Holger Schmitt (AEGEE-Berlin), Ivan Bielik (AEGEE-Brno) and Mayri Tiido (AEGEE-Tartu). Pauline Létard (AEGEE-Toulouse) withdrew her candidature last week with an announcement to the Network. She stated:
“I would like to inform you that I have decided to withdraw my candidature for Member of the Comité Directeur. In January when I decided to candidate, I was sure of my motivation. This is not the case anymore. I think a candidate for Comité Directeur needs to be 100% sure of her or his motivation and come to the CD house full of energy.” The fact that devoting one year of your life to the needs of a network requires a lot of motivation was stressed, and it’s remarkably honest that Pauline admitted that she wasn’t sure of her motivation.
In order to be elected, regular members of the Comité Director need to receive at least one third of the total amount of votes. That means that only the candidates who reach the 33% of the preferences will be elected as member of the Comité Directeur. This is possible as you will be able to vote for more candidates at the same time, so it’s not an either/or choice but you get to pick your best four.
Unluckily there still is no candidate for the position of Financial Director of AEGEE-Europe. The financial director is, one of the three mandatory positions in the board of AEGEE-Europe. Which means that we will not have a complete board until a Financial Director is elected. But, as many times before, someone will probably decide to run during the Agora after discussing the matter with Anna Gots (current Financial Director).
Written by Erika Bettin, AEGEE-Venezia