The 20th meeting of the ECO Council took place last 14-15 May 2019 in Copenhagen, chaired by Portugal.
The participants considered financial issues that are usually included on the agenda of the spring Council meeting, namely approval of the contributory unit to pay in 2020 and approval of the Office’s 2018 accounts, as well as the respective audit report. The financial plan for 2021-2022 was also noted and commented.
The ECO working programmes for last year and this year were reviewed. The preliminary results (up to 31 March) were noted, analysing the differences in effective support provided by the Office’s administrative personnel and experts compared to what was planned (2019 working programme). The draft programme for 2020 was also discussed.
The Office presented the current status of various ongoing projects such as the Office’s portal (CEPT-ECO-ECC-ComITU-CERP website), the Spectrum Engineering Advanced Monte Carlo Analysis Tool (SEAMCAT), the ECO frequency information system (EFIS), the document database, the Application Programming Interface (API) and the ECC working programme database.
The council members noted developments regarding the tenth and last ECO annual report and decided that for the first time only a digital version would be published. The report, now being reviewed by the communications consultant, will be sent to the council members for comments by the end of May.
The state of the ECO Convention since the “substantial” amendment of 23 November 2011 was noted, with a view to accommodating Turkey’s request to reduce its contributory unit. No new signatures or ratifications had been verified since the last Council session.
Regarding human resources management, the Council noted the report by the ECO director (Per Christensen, Dinamarca) concerning the latest hiring, to replace Bruno Espinosa of France, who accumulated the position of deputy director of the Office, and indicated that the Spanish international expert José Carrascosa would be replaced by early September. The interviews to be conducted by the recruitment panel, in which Portugal participates ex officio, will take place in June.
The Council chair proposed that CEPT’s working methods, particularly virtual and remote participation in meetings, should be examined again and eventually revised (the last such review took place nearly a decade ago), taking into account the effects of climate change, the overall urgency of decarbonising the economy and the fact that greenhouse effect gas (GEG) emissions from the aeronautic and marine sectors were excluded from the Paris Agreement. Most council members indicated that they very much favoured Portugal’s proposal, while underscoring the associated constraints, especially the high number of participants, which hinders communication and decision-making by consensus, as well as technical and security reasons. The United Kingdom even suggested that one of the Council’s annual meetings be held electronically, provided that it was not too long or controversial. The ECO will look into the inherent technical requisites; it was agreed that a test meeting would be held in September, before the Council’s autumn session.
The next meeting of the ECO Council has been scheduled for this coming 4-5 December, also at the ECO’s offices in Copenhagen.
