Minutes of the ECF Annual General Meeting held in Sofia, BUL on December 7, 2004 at 10:00 hoursDownload the document as pdf-file
Start of the meeting: 10:00 In attendance:
Executive Committee Malcolm Richardson President Dieter Kolb Vice-President John Stone Member at Large Leif Öhman Member at Large Olli Rissanen Rep. Northern Europe Ainsle Smith Rep. United Kingdom Urs Müller Rep. Central Europe Konstantin Zadvornov Rep. Eastern Europe Saskia Krügl Secretary/Treasurer The 30 member nations were represented as follows: Member nations represented in person with full voting rights: AND, AUT, BUL, DEN, ENG, ESP, FIN, FRA, GER, HUN, IRL, ITA, KAZ, LUX, LTU, NED, NOR, POL, RUS, SCO, SWE, SUI, WAL Member nations represented by proxy: AND (after departure of A. Ferguson-Smith who had to leave for play at the championships) Member nations not represented or without voting rights: BLR, CZE, GRE, ISR, LAT, LIE, SVK
The President welcomed everyone to the meeting and advised that Ivo Petrov of the Sofia Organising Committee would like to speak to the members.
Ivo Petrov thanked the ECF and its members for entrusting the 2004 championships to Sofia and said how proud he was to see all the European Curlers gathered in his home country. He expressed his hope that everybody was happy with the arrangements made and wished everyone a pleasant stay and exciting games in Sofia.
The President in return thanked Ivo Petrov and the whole Sofia Organising Committee for the excellent organisation of the event.
The Secretary announced that the Annual General Meeting had been convened by intimation to the members on October 21, 2004.
An apology was received from Karel Kubeska (Member at Large of the Executive Committee). More than one half of the member nations were represented in person. The Secretary therefore reported that there was a quorum and that the total number of votes available was 23. It was also reported that any decisions needing a two third majority would need a total of 16 votes.
The minutes of the ECF Semi-Annual General Meeting 2004 (Gävle) were taken as read and were unanimously approved.
The President explained that he had received confirmation from the WCF that agreement has been reached with Le Gruyere for their Title Sponsorship of the European Curling Championships to be renewed to cover the ECC’s in 2005 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and 2006 in Basel.
The Secretary reported that she had received applications for ECF membership from Croatia, Estonia, Ukraine and Serbia-Montenegro and that their applications would be dealth with under item 11) of the agenda. Also a bid to host the 2008 European Curling Championships had been received from the Swedish town Örnsköldsvik and that this bid would be dealth with under item 7) of the agenda.
Garmisch-Partenkirchen 2005 (December 9-17, 2005) The ECF Vice-President said that in Garmisch-Partenkirchen the preparations are going well and that everybody there is looking forward to welcoming the European Curlers and officials in December 2005. Basel 2006 (December 9-16, 2006) Beat Jäggi informed the meeting that a more detailed report would be made available during the WCF championships at Paisley, SCO. Andorra 2007 Andrew Ferguson-Smith informed the members that accommodation in Andorra can be obtained very close to the ice. He also said that due to the fact that the A- and B-arena are quite far apart it was considered to move the ice into the middle of the town but no decision was made yet.
The President invited Mr. Lars Ölund of the Örnsköldsvik Bidding Committee 2008 and his group to present their bid for 2008. A very comprehensive presentation of the Swedish bid was made: Örnsköldsvik, or "Övik" as the Swedish say, is 55 minutes by plane from Stockholm and has 60.000 inhabitants. The arena disposes of 6500 seats – the municipality supports the bid – between hotel and A-arena it takes 90 seconds travel time and between B- and A-arena it takes 4 minutes. The bid was unanimously accepted by acclamation.
The financial report and balance sheet 2003/2004 as presented by the Secretary/Treasurer were accepted unanimously. Regarding subscriptions the President explained that there were six nations (SCO, GER, SUI, SWE, NOR and DEN) that currently were paying a subscription of EUR 430.00 whereas the rest of the member nations were only paying EUR 280.00. As all ECF member nations have the same number of votes (namely 1) the Executive Committee thought it would only be fair if they all paid the same amount of subscription. In addition to that the Secretary explained that the Executive Committee proposed to change the annual amount of subscription to EUR 400,00 per member nation. She added that no record at all had been found of any raise in subscription in any of the previous minutes and that such a raise would be justified because of inflation and increased administrative workload. Ann Stone asked whether such a raise could be done in two steps? The Secretary replied that this had been considered by the Executive Committee but it was felt that a raise of EUR 120,00 is a feasible raise for each member nation. The member nations then unanimously accepted that the annual ECF subscription be EUR 400,00 in the future and they also accepted the budget 2004/2005 as presented by the Secretary/Treasurer.
Regarding the Swiss proposals for change of clause 9 and 10 of the constitution Urs Müller explained that the reason for these proposals had been the fact that Switzerland, Sweden and Scotland represent the majority of the European curlers. It was therefore the opinion of Switzerland that those countries should have a guaranteed seat in the Executive Committee and that more votes should be given to countries with more curlers. He went on saying that he had learnt during the past days that these proposals did not receive the approval of the members and would therefore now like to withdraw both Swiss proposals. The President added that the Executive Committee really should get smaller and emphasized that the RCCC (Scotland) should be given a guaranteed seat, not because of its number of curlers but as an honour for being the mother club of Curling. The Secretary again explained the two remaining proposals: Proposal President Proposal Vice-President/Secretary Executive Committee should consist of: Executive Committee should consist of: President President Vice-President Vice-President 5 members 5 members Each member from different member nation Each member from different member nation Male and female members Male and female members Guaranteed seat for Scotland No guaranteed seat for anybody The Secretary also explained that both proposals would now be voted on against each other and that the winner of the two current proposals would be voted on against the status quo. Any change of constitution would during the second ballot need a 2/3 majority. The first ballot was won with 14:4 votes (rest = abstentions) by the proposal of the Vice-President/Secretary, so the proposal of the President dropped out. During the second ballot 11 members voted for accepting the proposal of the Vice-President/Secretary (8 votes against, rest = abstentions) so the constitution remained unchanged, as no 2/3 majority was reached.
The Secretary informed the Annual General Meeting that the members of the Executive Committee would be elected/announced in the order President, Vice-President, Regional Representatives, Members at Large, Secretary/Treasurer. The Meeting then elected the following Executive Committee: President Malcolm RICHARDSON (SCO) only nominee / elected by acclamation Vice-President Dieter KOLB (GER) only nominee / elected by acclamation Representative Northern Europe: Olli RISSANEN (FIN) elected directly by the respective region Representative United Kingdom: John BROWN (ENG) elected directly by the respective region
Representative Central Europe: Andrew FERGUSON-SMITH (AND) elected directly by the respective region
Representative Eastern Europe: Konstantin ZADVORNOV (RUS) elected directly by the respective region The Secretary explained the procedure of the forthcoming elections for the member-at-large-positions, especially emphasizing the fact that elections do require an absolute majority. Having four nominees for three member-at-large-positions means that there will be a couple of ballots as follows: Each of the three member-at-large-positions will be elected separately. If, after the first ballot none of the four nominees has received an absolute majority, the person with the least number of votes drops out. This procedure goes on until one person of the four nominees receives an absolute majority and is therefore elected to the first member-at-large-position. For the second member-at-large-position the three remaining nominees compete against each other until one of them receives an absolute majority (as explained above) and so on. Following the above procedure, the following members-at-large (in alphabetical order) were elected: Mr. Urs MÜLLER (SUI) Mr. Leif ÖHMAN (SWE) Mr. Ainslie SMITH (SCO) Also, Mrs. Saskia KRÜGL was unanimously confirmed as Secretary/Treasurer of the federation. The President welcomed John Brown and Andrew Ferguson-Smith as new members of the Executive Board and thanked John Stone for his support and work during his time as ECF Executive Committee Member.
The Secretary reported that she had received applications for ECF membership from Croatia, Estonia, Ukraine and Serbia-Montenegro. She added that the applications from Estonia and Ukraine were complete and those two countries could be accepted as full members (already being WCF members as well). Both countries were then accepted as full ECF members by acclamation. In addition Croatia and Serbia-Montenegro were accepted as provisional ECF-members until their acceptance as WCF members (Note of the Secretary: Croatia was accepted as provisional WCF member the following day and therefore now is a full ECF member)
The representatives of Lithuania gave a short report on their Curling activities in Lithuania and informed the members that any correspondence from Lithuania signed by a Mr. Antanas Vilcinskas should please be disregarded as he is not member of their board anymore.
Following the question of Alain Contat whether a Semi-Annual Meeting will take place the President said that this had not yet been decided, but if so, members would be informed as soon as possible.
(Note of the Secretary: It has now been decided that a Semi-Annual Meeting will take place in Paisley, Scotland on March 22, 2005 at 10:00 a.m.)
The meeting closed at 11:05.
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