The 14th meeting of the ECO Council was held last 3-4 May in Dublin, on the invitation of the Commission for Communications Regulation and chaired by Portugal.
The Council approved the final version of the Office’s budget for 2017 and took note of the 2018-2019 Financial Plan to approve at the upcoming autumn Council. The unit of contribution (UC) administrations must pay to the EC will be maintained next year, as has been occurring since 2003.
The council members noted that in early 2015 Danske Bank adopted a negative interest rate of -0.45 percent; the ECO accordingly transferred most of its deposits to Nordea. That bank, however, announced in February that it would also adopt a negative interest rate of -0.50 percent on all deposits, effective as from 1 April 2016. The Office is considering transferring its money back to Danske Bank, and at the same time is studying new low-risk investments. Portugal raised the question of the impact the current negative interest rates will have on depreciation of the net capital. This will be an issue to follow.
The Council reviewed the ECO’s working programme for 2016 as well as the draft working programme for 2017. It also went over the final report from the 2015 working programme, analysing differences between the support effectively provided by the Office’s personnel and experts and what was originally foreseen.
The council members noted the draft text of the seventh and upcoming edition of the ECO annual report, whose comments period was extended, as was the expected publication date, pushed back one month to June.
The Council agreed on the replacement of the Russian expert Stella Lyubchenko at the end of May 2017, when the 8-year maximum period of her contract expires, namely with respect to the calendar of the process, which runs between this October and January 2017. The new expert will take office on 1 May 2017. Ex officio and as chair of the ECO Council, Portugal participates in the hiring panel that will be set up (along with one council member, usually the vice-chair of the ECO Council, the director of the Office and the chair of the Frequency Management working group).
The chair asked the director for the other 11 administrations that are in CEPT but have not joined the ECO Convention to be formally contacted, as happened early in the year with Slovenia and Malta, and which encompass a total of 22 UCs. All will potentially join, paying just one unit, except Russia (10 UCs).
The ECO director presented to the Council the April 2015 request by the European Emergency Number Association, a non-governmental organisation, urging that management of the database for transnational emergency calls made through European Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs), commonly known as 112 Centres, be transferred to the ECO. The issue has already been debated twice in the ECC and raised a certain amount of controversy; the ECO Council must confirm that it has no objections to the initiative of the Emergency Services project team of the working group on Numbering and Networks (WG NaN), namely in terms of obligations and costs of that database. The director reminded the council members that there is a financial outlay for this activity, approved in the scope of the Office’s budget. The Council members mandated the ECO director to follow developments of this matter, at both WG NaN and ECC levels; a document reporting its current situation should be presented and discussed at the next Council session, scheduled for late November, before going ahead with the decision to analyse the legal implications of managing the PSAP database from the ECO.
The next meeting has been scheduled for this coming 30 November and 1 December in Copenhagen.
