Summary

  • Article 28, No. 169 of the ITU Constitution removes a Member State's vote only for so long as its arrears equal or exceed the contribution due for the two preceding years. The operative record is a dated comparison, not the existence of debt.
  • Resolution 41 says amounts covered by an agreed repayment schedule are not counted under No. 169 while the State strictly complies. A gross balance, a special arrears account and a voting status are therefore three different objects.
  • PP-26 should publish a privacy-bounded calculation receipt for every consequential electorate snapshot, while keeping treaty status, credentials, presence and proxy execution in their separate gates.

The largest number on the page answers the wrong question

An arrears table is designed to reconcile money owed to an institution. A voter list is designed to identify which members may exercise constitutional power. The two records can draw from some of the same accounts without being interchangeable.

That distinction matters before the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference scheduled for 9–27 November 2026 in Doha. The official election presentation defines the electorate through three cumulative conditions: a Member State is present, has the right to vote and has credentials found in order by the Plenary meeting. This article isolates the middle condition. Registration, diplomatic credentials, presence and proxies have their own authorities and evidence. None can repair a failed financial gate, and a clean financial record cannot replace any of them.

The financial gate is also narrower than the phrase “no arrears”. Article 3 of the Constitution gives each Member State one vote at a Plenipotentiary Conference subject to Nos. 169 and 210. No. 210 concerns treaty status. No. 169 supplies the payment rule. A Member State in arrears loses its vote for so long as the amount of those arrears equals or exceeds the contribution due for the two preceding years.

The result is a comparison at a time, not a moral label attached to a debtor. Below the threshold and at or above it are different legal states. The two-year reference also needs a provenance record: which contribution years were used, what was due in each and which contribution class or later correction supplied the figures.

Resolution 41 changes what the formula counts

The gross balance still does not settle the calculation. Resolution 41 (Rev. Dubai, 2018) creates a structured treatment for special arrears accounts. Amounts due are not taken into account when applying No. 169 if the Member State has submitted a repayment schedule, agreed it with the Secretary-General and continues to comply strictly with the schedule and its associated conditions.

That rule does not forgive the debt. It changes how covered amounts are treated for one constitutional test while performance continues. Failure to comply can cancel the special arrears account. A State can therefore owe money, have an agreed repayment account and retain a different No. 169 result from a State with the same gross balance but no valid exclusion. If an agreement is cancelled, the calculation may need to be performed again with a different countable amount.

The essential evidence is a state transition. Proposed schedule, agreed schedule, compliant schedule, missed condition, cure and cancellation are not synonyms. Nor should the public be asked to trust a generic “payment plan” badge. The status should identify the controlling agreement version, responsible authority, effective time and next review, without publishing confidential payment instructions or the State's banking information.

The 2026 finance records are inputs, not verdicts

The current Council record shows why a shortcut would mislead. Document C26/11(Rev.1) reported total arrears of CHF 37.39 million at 31 December 2025. It also said the Secretary-General annually reminds States that have lost the vote or are liable to lose it in the following year. The document recorded five new special arrears accounts during 2025 involving four Member States and one Sector Member, and the cancellation for non-payment of two Member State repayment agreements.

A later information paper put total Union arrears at CHF 36,574,275.16 on 31 March 2026, down 1.82 per cent from the end of 2025. Its summary separates contributions, publications, satellite-network filings, miscellaneous invoices, UIFN invoices, special arrears accounts and cancelled special arrears accounts. Its annex contains both Member States and other types of ITU members.

These are valuable financial records. They still cannot be read as a PP-26 voter roll. A row may contain debt classes that do not produce the No. 169 comparison on their own. The table does not, in one joined record, show the two preceding contribution amounts, the legally excluded portion under a compliant schedule, current treaty status, conference credentials or presence on ballot day.

Council Decision 646 supplies another warning against inference. On 21 May 2026 the Council approved writing off CHF 566,815.60 in interest on arrears and irrecoverable debts. That decision changes the accounting record through a stated Council act. It is not itself a declaration that a particular PP-26 voting status changed. A reproducible eligibility record must state which debt classes the Constitution counts rather than treating every movement in the Union's total receivables as electoral news.

Payment has more than one time

Close to an election, “paid” is not a sufficiently precise timestamp. A transfer may be initiated by a treasury, reach a bank, receive a value date, appear in the Union's ledger and be applied to the eligibility calculation at different moments. A correction or credit can follow later. The legal status needs to say which event the rule recognises and when the resulting comparison became effective.

This does not require a public bank statement. A bounded record can disclose received, posted, applied and effective times; the amount used in the calculation; and the office that confirmed it. Account numbers, transaction references, payment instructions and personal contacts can remain private. The objective is constitutional completeness with financial minimisation.

The same discipline applies to a repayment schedule. The public needs the schedule's status and the amount excluded from the No. 169 computation. It does not need every instalment term. An independent reviewer can verify the protected schedule while the public record shows the conclusion and its evidentiary basis.

A list is useful, but a derivation survives a challenge

ITU's Member-State status page links to lists of States having and having lost the right to vote. At the evidence cutoff, an anonymous request for either linked PDF was redirected to ITU authentication. Even a fully public current list, however, would answer only the result. It would not show how the result was produced or which time it describes.

The missing object is an arrears-eligibility receipt. For each State it should name the Constitution and Resolution versions; the calculation time and effective time; the two contribution years and amount due for each; gross arrears by relevant class; amounts excluded under a compliant special account; countable arrears; the threshold; and the comparison result.

It should then record payment recognition events, repayment-schedule state, responsible offices, corrections and supersession. Each prior receipt should remain available with a pointer to the current one. The conference can publish a compact State-level result and aggregate denominator while a protected audit layer retains the detailed financial evidence.

Finally, the receipt must stop at its boundary. A successful No. 169 calculation produces a base financial status. No. 210 treaty status remains separate. Credentials remain subject to their formal instrument and conference review. Presence and proxy execution remain session-specific. The ballot denominator should join those gates by version, not let one database overwrite the others.

What the evidence does not prove

The public 31 March annex names debtors and amounts, but it does not prove that any named State will be unable to vote at PP-26. A visible balance may fall below the constitutional threshold, include classes requiring different treatment or sit inside a compliant repayment arrangement. A later payment or cancellation may change the position.

Nor does the evidence prove that a State will be present, accredited or included in a final ballot denominator. PP-26 has not occurred. The disciplined conclusion is structural: the institution already has a rule with moving inputs and an explicit exception. It should publish the derivation before a contested vote makes reconstruction political.

Debt collection can remain firm without converting a financial spreadsheet into a constitutional oracle. The thin rule is clear enough: identify the relevant amounts, apply the stated exception, compare them at a stated time and preserve the result. Legitimacy depends on showing that calculation rather than asking a balance to speak beyond its function.

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