Summary

  • RIPE-860 puts the year-end 2025 Clearing House Reserve at EUR 33.663 million, or 82% of the 2026 operating-expense budget of EUR 41.125 million: 9.8 months at that spending rate.
  • Its separate estimate of at least 15 months under zero income adds four to six months under assumptions about when a shock lands and an immediate halt to non-essential spending.

Analysis

RIPE NCC’s reserve policy offers two figures that can sound like competing descriptions of the same buffer. They are not. The first is arithmetic: the published reserve at 31 December 2025 divided by the current-year operating-cost budget. RIPE-860 reports coverage of 82%, equivalent to 9.8 months of expenses at the budgeted rate.

That ratio sits within the document’s stated target band of 60% to 100% of budgeted operating expenses, and close to its 80% benchmark. The policy does not describe the reserve as deficient. If the latest audited reserve falls below 60% or rises above 100%, RIPE NCC and its Executive Board must publish a plan to restore it to the minimum or reduce it through redistribution or refunds.

The 15-month figure is a stress estimate, not another division of the reserve by annual costs. RIPE NCC says it could add four to six months to the 9.8-month calculation because most annual membership income is collected before the end of the first quarter. A loss of income would have to hit in the first two months, before collection, or in the final two months, after most of the annual budget had been spent. The estimate also assumes non-essential spending would stop immediately.

The document calls a failure to collect all membership income unlikely, describes the estimate as conservative and says its assumptions can change. The 15 months therefore depend on timing and operational choices; the policy does not promise that every service or budget line would continue unchanged for that long.

A separate 2027 draft lists EUR 44.2 million in operating costs and EUR 10.5 million in capital expenditure. Members were due to discuss it on 28 October, with a final version expected in December. RIPE-860 measures reserves against operating expenses. Neither that rule nor the draft says the reserve will fund the full capital plan, and the draft is not a final spending authorization.

For members, the useful comparison is the audited reserve, the operating budget used as denominator, the timing of fee collection and the spending assumptions behind the stress case. Those assumptions are part of the resilience claim.

Sources