To prepare you for Spring Agora Patra we already wrote a series of articles under the name of Proposal for Dummies, and with Autumn Agora Cagliari coming close it’s time to do it again! This time, we decided to include the people who know the most about the proposals, namely the proposers! Read on to find more about the proposals dealing with the Network Meeting Reform and deletion of the NetCom rules.
NWM Ioannina
The first proposal is named Network Meeting Reform and was proposed by Mattia Abis on behalf of the Network Commission. Asked where the idea for the proposal came from, he tells us: “I think the idea was in the air for a long time and many Network Commissioners found themselves discussing this issue. Briefly, we inherited the task of defining the Network Meeting (NWM) since there was not a clear idea of it and everybody was organizing something completely different from the others. The idea behind this proposal therefore is find a common ground for this event.” The way of working on this proposal however changed over time, as Mattia explains us: “After Spring Agora Patra we understood that we could not reform the NWMs trying to impose a model typical of an area on the others, but we have to respect the differences we have in the Network. I want to thank my colleagues for this.”
NWM Brescia
As already mentioned, through this proposal Mattia and the NetCom try to define the Network Meeting and find a common ground for it. They therefore defined the content for NWMs, namely: sharing best practices, keeping the locals closer to each other, connecting them with the European Level, improving the functioning of the locals, increasing cooperation between them, giving inspiration and renewing the motivation of active members. Next to that, they make a clear distinction between the NWM and Regional Training Course and procedural statements about the organisation are added, like a mandatory Open Call to find the host and a minimum duration of two days with a minimum tuition of sixteen hours. The timing of the Network Meeting will be far from Statutory Events, in order to increase the participation in both events, and there will be a maximum of two Network Meetings in the same days. Last but not least the Network Meeting will remain an event open to all AEGEE members but targeted at board members.
The full proposal with all the changes made to the General Rules of the CIA can be found here.
CIA
The second proposal is named Improving the CIA one step at a time (4): Removing the Rules of the Network Commission and it was suggested by Joris Veenhuis, Glòria Llopart and Claudio Gennaro on behalf of the Juridical Commission. First of all, you may wonder: “What is this CIA you are talking about? Is AEGEE-Europe secretly American?” Simply said, the CIA (Corpus Iuridicum Aegeense) is a document with over a hundred pages containing all the rules which govern AEGEE-Europe. It is therefore considered as the legal framework of the Association, and all members are obliged to follow its provisions. Although no secret agents are involved in it, it is one of the most important documents. In the CIA, which you can read here, you can find for example the Statutes of AEGEE-Europe, the Working Formats of the different bodies and all kind of rules (General Rules, Rules of the Network Commission, Antennae Criteria, etc.).
copyright Stephanie Pakrul
Now that we know what the CIA actually is, it’s time to see what the proposal is about. As Joris explains, the proposal is part of a project to improve the CIA one step at a time, which already started during Spring Agora Patra. “We wanted to deregulate and simplify something in the CIA as the complicatedness and sheer size of it is something we often get complaints about.” They therefore suggest deleting the rules of the Network Commission “in order to concentrate all the rules and to prevent double and conflicting rules.” This doesn’t mean these rules will be completely lost, because most rules are found somewhere else in the CIA (for example in the Statues and the Working Format of the Network Commission) and the rules that are not found somewhere else in the CIA, like the rules about Regional Training Courses, will be moved to the General Rules. As a result, the CIA will be a bit shorter and easier to understand, and the NetCom will have a little bit more autonomy over their own tasks and responsibilities.
The full proposal with all the changes made to the CIA can be found here.
Written by Svenja van der Tol, AEGEE-Nijmegen