Summary

  • The October 2019 General Meeting rejected full retention of the 2019 financial surplus and approved a 50/50 split between the Clearing House reserve and redistribution to members in 2020 [1][2].
  • The redistribution totalled EUR 8,365,249, credited as a discount on 2020 invoices rather than paid in cash [4][5].
  • The authority to make this choice sits in Article 7 of the Standard Service Agreement, and the details in the Clearing House Procedure (RIPE-625) [6][9].

The vote that set the remedy

The RIPE NCC General Meeting of 16-18 October 2019, held in Rotterdam, put two options before the membership for the 2019 financial result [1][3]. Option A, the formal resolution, read: "The General Meeting approves that the RIPE NCC 2019 financial surplus will be added to the Clearing House reserve." It failed: 561 yes, 1,124 no, 64 abstain [1].

Option B read: "The General Meeting approves that 50% of the RIPE NCC 2019 financial surplus will be added to the Clearing House reserve and 50% of the RIPE NCC 2019 financial surplus will be redistributed to the membership in 2020." It passed with 911 yes, 738 no, 59 abstain [1][2].

The voting report records that 2,023 members registered to vote and 1,749 cast ballots, and that the Resolution 1 options required more than 50% yes votes to be approved; abstentions were recorded but did not affect the count [2]. A contemporaneous announcement of 18 October 2019 by Managing Director Axel Pawlik confirmed both resolutions, including Resolution 2 amending the Articles of Association, which passed with 1,193 yes, 240 no and 257 abstain on a two-thirds threshold [3][11].

The fallback the minutes disclose

One detail in the minutes deserves emphasis: had neither option been adopted, the 2019 financial surplus would have been redistributed to the membership in 2020 according to the Clearing House Procedure [1]. The membership therefore did not choose between retention and return in the abstract; it chose between full retention and the mandated half-split, with the default already pointing toward redistribution. That structural default is the single most important fact for reading the vote: the no-majority against full retention (1,124 votes) expressed a preference that the record shows was already partially encoded in the governing procedure.

The governing instruments

Article 7 of the Standard Service Agreement is the clause chain that made all of this possible. Article 7.1 defines the Clearing House as "a tax-free financial reserve that provides for the financial stability of the RIPE NCC." Article 7.2 provides that "The General Meeting will each year decide on whether the RIPE NCC's financial result will be added or deducted to or from the Clearing House reserve or will be redistributed among the Members," and permits a one-off redistribution from the reserve.

Article 7.3 provides that the Clearing House Procedure stipulates the details of a potential redistribution and that a Member's share is credited on the service fee of the year following the decision [6][7].

The 2020 Billing Procedure then binds the outcome to the clause: its Section 2.2 is titled "Redistribution of excess contribution 2019 (Standard Service Agreement, article 7.3)" and states that members voted at the 16-18 October 2019 GM to redistribute 50 percent of the excess contributions paid in 2019 to the membership in 2020, with the per-LIR amount appearing on the 2020 invoice [5].

The procedure and the money

The Clearing House Procedure, RIPE-625, published 13 November 2014, supplements the SSA and specifies that each autumn the General Meeting decides, based on the estimated year-end result, whether to add or subtract the result to the reserve or redistribute it; that a member's annual share equals its percentage of service fees paid in the relevant year; and that shares are not paid out but credited and deducted from the service fee for the year after the decision [9]. Members that fulfilled their financial obligations participate; those whose agreements terminated do not [9].

The RIPE NCC's own redistribution page quantifies the outcome: "The amount to be redistributed for 2019 is EUR 8,365,249." The per-LIR formula divides each member's paid 2019 annual membership fee by EUR 33,099,600 and multiplies by EUR 8,365,249; only members with active LIR accounts on 31 December 2019 qualified, sign-up and re-activation fees were excluded, and the page's worked examples show a smallest-case LIR receiving EUR 353.82 and a ten-IR, five-LSHR member receiving EUR 543.37 [4]. The 2020 invoices carrying the discount were sent in February 2020 [4][5].

The audited Financial Report 2019 corroborates the mechanism and the number: it records "Redistribution of Member Fees 8,365" (kEUR) as of 31 December 2019, states that the redistribution of 50% of the surplus was approved by the October 2019 GM and would be credited on 2020 invoices, and shows the Clearing House buffer rising from 25.5M to 32.2M EUR against total 2019 income of 40.2M EUR, alongside a residual 169 kEUR redistribution of the 2018 surplus [10].

What the paper trail does and does not establish

The chain from clause to vote to invoice is documented end to end in the RIPE NCC's own publications: SSA Article 7 (RIPE-812, with a substantively identical Article 7 in RIPE-802), the RIPE-625 procedure, the minutes and voting report, the redistribution page, the 2020 billing procedure and the audited financial report [4][5][6][7][9][10].

What the excerpts do not establish is which SSA version — RIPE-802 or RIPE-812 — was formally operative at the moment of the vote; both carry the same Article 7 wording, so the substantive reading stands either way, but the version question is recorded as an uncertainty here rather than resolved [6][7].

Sources

  1. RIPE NCC GM October 2019 minutes
  2. RIPE NCC GM October 2019 voting report
  3. RIPE NCC General Meeting October 2019 news
  4. Redistribution of excess contribution 2019
  5. RIPE NCC Billing Procedure 2020
  6. RIPE-812: Standard Service Agreement
  7. RIPE-802: Standard Service Agreement
  8. RIPE-533: Charging & Clearing House
  9. RIPE-625: Clearing House Procedure
  10. RIPE NCC Financial Report 2019 (PDF)
  11. ncc-announce GM results thread
  12. RIPE-539: superseded Clearing House document
  13. Directory entry: redistribution-of-excess-contribution