During Agora, there can be many scary words going around if you are there for the first time – especially if you are a delegate. Don’t worry, the Chair Team is here for the rescue! In this article, all types of voting will be explained alongside what we will specifically vote on at Agora Catania, so you can come a bit more prepared.

Ratifying by acclamation

This is the most simple way of ratification, which is simply done by clapping. It is used for ratifying a decision or action. In case there are objections, it is possible to ask for indicative voting.

What we’ll ratify at Agora Catania:

• Ratification of Elisa Tabbi as Vice-Chairperson of the Agora
• Ratification of the Agenda of Agora Catania
• Ratification of minutes Agora Chisinau
• Ratification of minutes Agora Enschede
• Ratification of the Advisory Board of AEGEE-Europe
• Ratification of Liaison Officers
• Ratification of Europe on Track 5 project
• Ratification of the extension of Election Observation Project
• Ratification of the change of the status of The AEGEEan from project to Committee
• Ratification of to-be upgraded Contacts’ Activity Plan
• Ratification of Network Status Update Agora Catania
• Ratification of host local Autumn Agora 2018

Indicative voting

This is the type of voting which requires the red and green ballots that the Juridical Commission is giving out to delegates when they register at their table. Indicative voting is used in case the Chair Team (or the proposers) would like to get the opinion of the Plenary or Prytanium about a proposal or other matters, or delegates and envoys can request this method first in case they have an objection towards a ratification. In the case of indicative voting, delegates are asked to express their opinion by showing the green or the red ballot (the question and the meaning of the ballots will be explained beforehand). In case the results are not clear or if a delegate/envoy asks for other types of voting, the Chair Team will either move the voting online or will continue with a roll call.

Roll Call

This is the ultimate type of voting, when the decision is binding towards the Agora. On the request of the Chair Team or delegates/envoys, the Chair will ask every local to cast the number of votes they have one by one. Delegates can vote in favour, against or abstention in their case. The Juridical Commission is telling the delegates the number of votes they have (which is regulated by the CIA based on the number of members a local has) during registration, and they are checking on spot whether the number of votes cast are correct in case of a roll call. A roll call vote should be cast in the following way:

• AEGEE-Local number 1, 3 in favour, 1 against, 2 abstentions
• AEGEE-Local number 2, 1 in favour

As a roll call takes significant amount of time, it is usually used as a last resort, and in the recent Agorae, whenever it’s possible the votings are moved online.

Voting by ballots

This type of voting is used to vote on the candidatures. Each antenna’s delegates receive as many ballots as the number of votes they have from the Juridical Commission during the registration at their table. The ballot papers are color-coded for each position for easier vote-counting. During the voting session, delegates need to mark the candidates (with an x or +) that they would like to cast their votes on, or leave them blank in case they do not wish to cast their vote. The Juridical Commission will explain the voting process for each position.

What positions we’ll vote on at Agora Catania:

• Chairperson/Vice-Chairperson of the Agora (2 places)
• Member of Audit Commission (3 places)
• Member of Mediation Commission (4 places)
• Member of Network Commission (5 places)
• Member of Summer University Coordination Team (4 places)

Online voting

This type of voting is used for voting on plans, reports, topics, documents, proposals and motions (which include any topic that has been decided to be moved for online voting). The following list is subject to online voting:

What topics we’ll vote on online at Agora Catania:

• Activity Plan of Comité Directeur 2017-2018
• Activity Report of Comité Directeur 2016-2017 (including report of travels made and the expenses)
• Financial Report of AEGEE-Europe 2016-2017
• Proposed budget of AEGEE-Europe 2017-2018
• Proposals (8)
• Policy Paper on ECI
• Topic for the next European Planning Meeting Yerevan 2018
• Activity Plan of Working Groups 2017-2018
• Activity Report of Working Groups 2016-2017
• Final Action Agenda fulfillment 2016-2017
• Strategic Plan fulfillment 2014-2017

The results of online voting should be considered binding.

We hope that with this article we could give you a bit of help for understanding the procedures of the Agora! In case you have any questions or doubts, don’t hesitate to ask us before Agora at chair@aegee.org, or at the HRC help desk during the Agora!

Written by Tekla Hajdu, Chair Team jobshadower

Just like we did for the past Agorae, for Autumn Agora Chisinau, once again we would like to provide you with a short and easy summary of the proposals submitted for the Agora. In this second, and last round, we will be explaining you three proposals: “Remove Chair Team from EPM”, “Proposal to remove nationalities and countries from the CIA”, and “Give the Juridical Commission a more neutral role”. 

Remove Chair Team from EPM

Proposed by Lia Tuska, Human Resource Director and CD appointed member for the Chair Team, this proposal aims to finally regulate the role of the Chair Team at the EPM. Currently, the Chair Person, along with the Chair Team, presides over the EPM, choosing participants, all of this being done in cooperation with the Comité Directeur, ACT, Working Groups, Content Manager(s) and Local Organisers. In recent years, the relevance of the Chair Team has decreased and, according to the proposer, the EPM can be organised without the input of the Chair Team. Instead it will be organised by a team, representing the Comité Directeur, ACT, Working Groups and Content Manager(s).

The proposal, provided it will be accepted, will change some articles of the statutes. In the Working format of the Agora, all the references to EPM in the work of the Chair Team will be removed. In the General Financial Rules, the part that grants reimbursement to the Chair Team will also be removed.

The most substantial changes will be applied to the Working format of the European Planning Meeting. With these changes, the organisation, the selection of participants, the moderation of the sessions, the execution of the Agenda, and the collection of minutes fall to the Comité Directeur, with the help of one or more appointed people. The Comité Directeur is still in charge of appointing the Content Team who will prepare the Agenda and organise the content part in order to develop the EPM topic.

You can read the full proposal here.

Proposal to remove nationalities and countries from the CIA

Evelien Kroon, Steyn Ten Kate and Lea Watzlawek, on behalf of AEGEE-Enschede, are presenting the proposal that aims to remove any kind of reference to nationality or country in the CIA, especially in the composition of the elected bodies. In case this proposal will pass, there will be no limitation on the nationality of the elected candidate.

The local has already presented this proposal during Spring Agora 2014, but it was rejected. At this point, the Dutch local’s representatives are proposing it again, with the assumption that, according to our vision, AEGEE strives for a borderless Europe and rules regarding nationalities and countries.

For example, the Comité Directeur should not contain more than three members that share the same nationality, and at least four nationalities must be represented. In case more than three people share the same nationality, only the three that gather more votes will be elected, while the rest of the vacancies shall remain open. If this proposal passes, there will be no limitation on the nationality of the elected candidates. This means that hypothetically the (up to seven) members of the Comité Directeur can be from the same country.

You can read the full proposal here.

Give the Juridical Commission a more neutral role

During Spring Agora Bergamo, a proposal gave the Juridical Commission the power to fix small mistakes and inconsistencies, without submitting proposals in case changes need to be made. Evelien Kroon, Steyn Ten Kate and Lea Watzlawek, on behalf of AEGEE-Enschede, are proposing to offer the Juridical Commission a more neutral role by removing them from the legislative process during the Agora. They propose to compare the duties of the JC on an abstract level to those of the Chair Team; helping in its preparation and execution, but in a strictly impartial role.

In case this proposal will be accepted, the status of the JC during the Agora will change in the Statutes of AEGEE-Europe, and they will no longer be members of the Agora. In the Working Format of the Agora, the JC will not have the status of Envoy anymore, they will not be in charge of the voting and the procedure of counting the votes cast,  and a new paragraph explaining the role of the JC in the Agora would be added.

You can read the full proposal here.

Written by Erika Bettin, AEGEE-Verona

Maarten de Groot, member of AEGEE-Amsterdam is the Manager of “Think before you Vink”, a campaign on behalf of AEGEE in the run-up to the referendum on the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, which will be held on April 6th. We asked him for more info about this campaign and the activities concerning this topic.

During the Network Meeting (NWM) in Delft, in November 2015, Loes Rutten (AEGEE-Utrecht and Network Commissioner) started the discussion on the referendum on the EU-Ukraine Association within AEGEE. During a couple of Skype meetings with active AEGEEans interested in the topic, a basic outline of an AEGEE campaign was established. Members decided to launch an open call for campaign team members, because they needed more human resources to make their ideas come true. After a successful recruitment period, they managed to form a campaign team consisting of fifteen AEGEEans from six Dutch locals. In order to organise their work efficiently, they distinguished between a Core Team and three sub-teams (Content Team, PR Team, Video Team).

The following AEGEEans are members of the campaign team: Femke Lokhorst and Steven Hagen from AEGEE-Delft; Willem Laurentzen and Matthijs Dirks from AEGEE-Nijmegen; Rick Kloosterman from AEGEE-Groningen; Sien Rongen and Jeroen van Rijn from AEGEE-Utrecht; Isabel Louhenapessy from AEGEE-Leiden; Gijs van Amerongen, Leonie Francien Sellies, Herman Hilverda, Tessel Peereboom, Maxime Nelissen, Margreet Clemens, and Maarten De Groot from AEGEE-Amsterdam.

Since July 2015, a new Dutch law has come into force, which allows citizens to call for an advisory referendum on many of the bills that pass Parliament, as long as they collect the right amount of signatures (i.e. 10.000 in the first and 300.000 in the second round). The EU-Ukraine Association Agreement was the first bill to pass the Parliament after this law had come into force, and a number of organisations working under the name of GeenPeil have taken this as a first opportunity to launch a citizens’ initiative. The basic reason behind their initiative is that citizens must have a more direct say in the political decision-making processes, and European ones in particular. They managed to collect 428.000 signatures, which is more than enough to call for a referendum.

The Association Agreement between the EU and Ukraine would tighten the cooperation between the EU and Ukraine considerably. Most of the 323 pages of juridical text concern trade and economic cooperation, but others relate to the fight against corruption, strengthening the rule of law, human rights, and easing visa regulations.

‘Vink’ means ‘to tick a box’ in Dutch, which is what you do when you go to vote, so the campaign name basically states ‘think before you vote’. This is also what the team essentially wants to convey and facilitate with their campaign. They want to inform young Dutch people about the Association Agreement and the referendum in general, to involve them actively in balanced discussions on the topic, and to encourage them to cast a well-considered, well informed vote.

“We notice that many people in the Netherlands do not really know what to do with this referendum. The topic is a complex one, and not everyone is convinced that it is well-suited for a referendum. With our campaign we hope to stimulate Dutch youth not to take for granted their democratic right to vote, and to use it responsibly. That is to say, whether young Dutch people decide to vote or not, and if so to vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ is up to them, but we want them to take this decision only after careful deliberation” says Maarten.

The team started the campaign during the EPM Fair in Leiden, on February 27th. Subsequently, it held a lecture in Delft on March 4th, with Vasyl Myroshnychenko and Laura Starink, on the wider context of the Association Agreement. It was a successful event, in a room packed with 60 participants.

The biggest event took place on April 3rd, in Amsterdam: the Big Referendum Afternoon. There was an academic introduction of the topic of EU-referendums, followed by debates between six Presidents of Dutch youth political organisations, and a debate between a member of the Dutch national parliament for GroenLinks, the Dutch Left-wing Green Party and a member of the European Parliament for the Dutch Socialist Party. After this three-hour program, there was be the opportunity to talk to Ukrainians during a “living library” event combined with social drinks.

More information about the program of the AEGEE campaign can be found on their website or Facebook-page, mostly in Dutch.

Written by Matteo Lai, AEGEE-Cagliari.

Just like we did for the last Agorae, for Autumn Agora Kyïv we want to provide you again with a short and easy summary of the proposals submitted. In this fourth round, we will be explaining you three proposals that focus on different topics, from the selection of visitors to the number of votes for locals and LTC and RTC, namely ‘Number for votes for antennae with less than 10 members’, ‘Visitors selection procedure’ and ‘Changing the LTC as Antenna Criterion from organisation to participation’.

Currently the minimum number of members for locals is 10, but, in some occasions the Comité Directeur can grant an exception and we may find Antennae with less than 10 members. Those Antennae, when at the Agora, do not have any vote, while those with at least 10 members have one vote.

Damien Latacz and Philipp Blum on behalf of AEGEE-Aachen questioned this system and proposed ‘Number for votes for antennae with less than 10 members’. They state that any local that is an Antenna should have the right to vote, so their aim is to change the part of Article 17 that enlists the number of votes according to the number of members in a local, decreasing the number from 10 members to 1 in order to be able to vote.

You can read the full proposal here.

The second proposal is the ‘Visitors selection procedure’ by Damien Latacz and Philipp Blum on behalf of AEGEE-Aachen and Lucia Gavulová on behalf of AEGEE-Bratislava. In the past few years the Visitors selection procedure raised some eyebrows. In fact, at Autumn Agora Zagaroza 2013 a proposal was approved to add board comments and to invite the Chair Team and the Comité Directeur to follow the ranking decided by locals. Since then, visitors were selected based on the capacity of the facilities, the motivation letter and, then, the ranking. The proposers think that the mechanism is still not clear and the ranking in the system should be taken more into account since normally locals have a larger and better view of applicants. The change to the Working format of the Agora will affect the selection in the sense that the Chair Team will need to follow the ranking provided by locals, with the due exceptions. Moreover, exceptions need to be explained upon request and the Chair Team has to present a short report about them (without any indication of sensitive data of the applicants).

You can read the full proposal here.

During Spring Agora Asturias, we approved a new criterion for locals: organise a LTC  yearly, bringing criteria from 10 to 11. Already during the discussion in the prytanium, it was suggested to change the word ‘organise’ into ‘attend’, due to the fact that not all the locals might have the capacity to organise a LTC each year. Damien Latacz and Philipp Blum on behalf of AEGEE-Aachen are bringing up again this topic with the proposal ‘Changing the LTC as Antenna Criterion from organisation to participation’. To be validated as criterion, a LTC must be attended by at least the 50% of members who joined the local between 3 and 15 months prior the criterion is checked.

The proposal also changes who approves the LTC, that can be the Network Commission or an Ordinary member of AEGEE-Europe approved by the Comité Directeur.

You can read the full proposal here.

Written by Erika Bettin, AEGEE-Verona

This is the slogan of a big group of Italian young people all over Europe who decided to protest against the negation of the vote abroad. They can’t vote on the Italian General Election 2013 (which is taking place on the 24th and the 25th of February 2013) because they are abroad, taking part in mobility programmes such as Leonardo or Erasmus, or they are overseas for working experience or to study. People in these circumstances are not listed in the General Register of the Italians living abroad (AIRE); this status which would have permitted them to vote is gained only after living abroad for a period longer than one year.

Italian youth met each other through social networks one month ago, and created a page on Facebook to coordinate a very singular protest. They are divided in 25 European groups (Brussels, Madrid, Paris, Toulouse, Valladolid, Tenerife, Heidelberg, Cork, London, Lisbon, Potsdam, Vigo/Pontevedra/Ourense, Seville, Edinburgh, Berlin, Amsterdam, Marseille, Lyon, Valencia, Barcelona, Hannover/Gottingen, Dublin, Warsaw, Tours, York, Granada) and one South American group also (Sao Paolo, Brazil).

On the 23rd of February they are going to place a polling station in each town of their group to simulate their election in order “to give a moral slap” to their institutions. “They prevent us from voting…but we will do it anyway!”. This is their message.

They want to show that they are a many people and that maybe their vote would change the result of the election.

This creative reaction is proof that young people really want to be active and have their say.

For now they are trying to reach other Italian people, spreading flyers to share on social network, in the streets, in places and events where they can meet their young compatriots.

They are also sharing a simultaneous campaign for voting online, that is taking place the 24th and the 25th of February. It has not legal value (neither has the voting casted at the simulations), but it is useful to estimate how their vote would have count and to show their real will to make their voice heard.

With this article, we would also like to reach more Italian young people scattered all over Europe to let them know about the initiative and to give them the opportunity to take action, to join the groups in their city, or even create their own group.

The person who is writing is firstly involved. My name is Monica Riccio, I am 24 years old. I am from Napoli and I am doing an internship in AEGEE Europe, the European Student’s Forum. I am very active in my town, engaged in many projects for active citizenship and cooperation.

When I decided to join this initiative I was searching for Italian youths who were as astonished as me hearing the news that we couldn’t have the right to vote abroad. In that moment I started to contact Italian youths in Brussels, using social network, to organize a mobilization. Then, surfing the net, I found a page (https://www.facebook.com/italianiesclusidalvoto) which was created for the same purpose. Now it is a page that we use to inform and coordinate the initiative.

At the moment I’m leading the Belgian group with other three Italian girls (Eleonora, Marta and Claudia) and with the support of AEGEE-Europe. But we need to be more and more to raise our voice. So, if you have some friends doing Erasmus, Leonardo or experiences like these in Brussels or all over Europe, please spread the word and contact us so they can also participate in our initiative.

For Brussels add on FB: Elezioni Italiane a Bruxelles  http://goo.gl/SWnC2

For other European groups: http://www.facebook.com/events/453149821405565/?ref=ts&fref=ts

For the online vote: https://iovoto.evoting.it/registrazione/