Summary

  • On 1 October 2026, BEREC’s Board of Regulators elected Michel Van Bellinghen as Chair for 2028. The published meeting conclusions describe a joint vote and name the winners by post.
  • The Chair’s year begins in 2028, but the preparation begins earlier: the incoming Chair joins the 2027 Mini-Board and prepares the annual programme for the year ahead.
  • The Board keeps formal authority. It elects the Chair, adopts the annual work programme and remains BEREC’s main decision-making body; the Chair represents BEREC externally under the Board’s mandate.
  • BEREC publishes eligibility rules and a two-thirds voting threshold. Its public results record gives no vote total, denominator, margin or competing-candidate list.

The handover starts before the chairmanship

On 1 October, BEREC’s Board of Regulators chose Michel Van Bellinghen, Chair of Belgium’s BIPT Council, to lead BEREC in 2028. The choice came two calendar years before his Chair year. BEREC says he will serve as a Vice-Chair in 2027, alongside the incoming 2027 Chair, Alejandra de Iturriaga Gandini, and the outgoing Chair, Marko Mišmaš. The organisation describes this as a way to keep the transfer moving while the current Chair still holds the office.

That extra year carries work, not just ceremony. The incoming Chair can cover the role if the Chair cannot perform duties, follows a cluster of working groups, and prepares the annual work programme in the year before taking office. The Chair for 2028 therefore enters the programme’s drafting path during 2027. The term itself lasts one year and may be renewed once. BEREC says this will be Van Bellinghen’s second time as Chair.

The sequence has an obvious practical advantage. A new Chair does not arrive on 1 January to discover that the year’s priorities have already been set in a corridor. There is time to learn the board’s routine, build working relationships and shape a proposal before chairing plenaries and overseeing delivery. Continuity is designed into the timetable.

The Board holds the vote and the programme

The Chair’s influence has a boundary. BEREC calls its Board of Regulators the main decision-making body. Each EU Member State has one voting member; participating third-country regulators and the European Commission may attend without a vote. The Board appoints the Chair and Vice-Chairs, adopts BEREC’s annual work programme and takes the organisation’s regulatory decisions. The Chair handles external representation on the Board’s mandate and reports those activities back to members.

The programme calendar shows how preparation and authority share the same runway. BEREC’s 2027 outline was adopted in January 2026. An early call for input ran from 27 February to 15 April. At the October plenary, the Board adopted the draft 2027 programme for public consultation, with comments due by 31 October. Stakeholders can shape the record and flag priorities; the Board makes the formal adoption decision. The future 2028 Chair’s preparation will sit inside that same sequence of drafting, consultation and Board approval.

The appointment rule is also public. A nominee needs support from at least four BEREC members other than the candidate, at least one year as Vice-Chair, and the votes of at least two-thirds of Board members who vote. The Board’s page allows a show of hands or a secret ballot when the request meets its stated conditions. BEREC’s meeting conclusions record a joint vote for the 2028 Chair, the 2027 Vice-Chairs and the non-voting participants’ representative. They then list the winners. They do not show the voting method, who else stood, the number of participating members or the result against the threshold.

The gap has a specific consequence: readers cannot measure the breadth of support from the published result. A short receipt could publish the voting method, denominator and aggregate result while keeping individual choices private in a secret ballot. The fact that would change this assessment is a public record showing how the two-thirds threshold was met.

Put the relay on the record

BEREC already has the important pieces: named offices, election rules, working-group responsibilities, an annual programme process and a decision-making Board. The missing link is a compact, dated record connecting the incoming Chair to the Board’s authorization and the work programme the Chair helps prepare.

The receipt could identify the election cycle, eligibility rule, voting method, aggregate result, Chair term, incoming Vice-Chair year, programme-preparation window and the Board decision that adopts the programme. A versioned programme record could then show which draft changed after consultation and which Board decision made the final text authoritative. That would let readers trace who prepared, who advised, who voted and who approved without pretending that every participant holds the same power.

The official sources support a system built for continuity and Board control. Its next improvement is small: preserve enough of the vote and programme handover to let the public see the relay, rather than only the person holding the baton.

Sources