The Central Staff Committee of the EPO Remarks on Unlawful Censorship by the Office
- Guest Editorial Team
- 2020-08-18 18:32:23 UTC
- Modified: 2020-08-18 18:32:23 UTC
Original letter from the EPO's Central Staff Committee [PDF]
Summary: "Institutionalised injustice," a new publication by the EPO's Central Staff Committee (CSC)
Zentraler Personalausschuss
Central Staff Committee
Le Comité Central du Personnel
Institutionalised injustice
Munich, 14.08.2020
sc20125cp – 0.2.1/5.2
Dear colleagues,
You may wonder why on earth the CSC is publishing now two documents dated October 2016 relating to the internal justice system of the EPO (a presentation and an open letter to PD43). Well, there is a simple explanation for this.
The internal Appeal Committee (ApC) has recently found that the Office was wrong in refusing the publication of the two documents. The President of the Office has finally decided to follow the unanimous opinion of the ApC. As a result, almost four years later, the documents can be published on the Intranet at last!
The Appeals Committee will publish in-house abstracts from the final decision and from the opinion of the ApC. In the present case of censorship, we consider it legitimate to inform you without further delay about basic principles of freedom of speech, as unanimously confirmed by the ApC:
- Freedom of speech is part and parcel of freedom of association. Those freedoms are not absolute or unconditional. It is therefore not illegitimate for an Organisation to prevent publications containing incorrect information, or statements impairing the dignity of international civil service or grossly abusing freedom of speech. However, this exercise has its limits.
- As regards factual correctness, taking an overall view of the presentation objected to by the Administration, the ApC found it impossible to accept that two deviations from actual official figures were grave enough to be capable of justifying refusal of publication.
- Staff representatives may criticise the Office’s policies and actions, even sharply, as long as the language used is not injurious or defamatory, albeit robust. This is rather to be seen as a manifestation of the political jousting between management and staff bodies that is part and parcel of the life of a healthy International Organisation.
- It is essential for staff members to have knowledge of the various positions discussed between the Administration and the Staff Committee on matters of general interest for staff. This ensures that the Administration can be exposed to a degree of accountability to staff for policy decisions affecting them.
The ApC unanimously concluded that censorship was neither appropriate nor proportionate and that the refusal to publish both documents was tainted by illegality.
In addition it also found aggravating circumstances in the way how the Office handled the CSC requests, by delaying a response and then failing to respond altogether. The ApC also had “some difficulty in understanding” the Administration when it then raised a receivability objection with no serious arguments at the appeal stage.
The case illustrates the incontrovertible fact that the delays in the internal justice system make judicial redress of abuse of power by the Administration an illusory exercise in many cases, especially in cases of censorship. This is why we usually also make our publications available to the two unions for them to publish them as well, if they so wish. However, to be fair, the current President of the Office has been much more liberal than his predecessor as far as publications by the Staff Committee(s) are concerned.
The Central Staff Committee
Recent Techrights' Posts
- The Only Thing the So-called 'Hey Hi Revolution' Gave Microsoft is More Debt
- Microsoft bailouts
- FUD Alert: 2024 is Not 2011 and Ebury is Not "Linux"
- We've seen Microsofers (actual Microsoft employees) putting in a lot of effort to shift the heat to Linux
- [Video] 'Late Stage Capitalism': Microsoft as an Elaborate Ponzi Scheme (Faking 'Demand' While Portraying the Fraud as an Act of Generosity and Demanding Bailouts)
- Being able to express or explain the facts isn't easy because of the buzzwords
-
- Links 16/05/2024: Orangutans as Political Props, VMware Calls Proprietary 'Free'
- Links for the day
- TechTarget (and Computer Weekly et al): We Target 'Audiences' to Sell Your Products (Using Fake Articles and Surveillance)
- It is a deeply rogue industry that's killing legitimate journalism by drowning out the signal (real journalism) with sponsored fodder
- Links 15/05/2024: XBox Trouble, Slovakia PM Shot 5 Times
- Links for the day
- Windows in Times of Conflict
- In pictures
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 15, 2024
- IRC logs for Wednesday, May 15, 2024
- Gemini Links 15/05/2024: 50 Years of Text Games
- Links for the day
- Ebury is Not "Linux", That's Just the Media Shifting Attention (Microsoft in the Hot Seat for Total Breach Right Now)
- Seems like it may be a Trojan
- Links 15/05/2024: Growing Tensions Between East and West, Anticlimax in Chatbot Space
- Links for the day
- Richard Stallman Talk 'Delayed'
- "Repousé à une date ultérieur. Du au congé, il n'était pas possible de l'organiser bien dans le temps disponible."
- Links 15/05/2024: Toll on Climate Change, Physical Assaults on Politicians
- Links for the day
- [Meme] Free Society Requires Free Press
- The Assange decision is now less than a week away (after several delays and demand for shallow 'assurances')
- CyberShow Goes "Live"
- The CyberShow has a similar worldview (on technology and ethics) to ours
- Latest Status of Site Archives (Static Pages)
- article listings are reaching a near-final form
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 14, 2024
- IRC logs for Tuesday, May 14, 2024
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- Today's Talk by Richard Stallman Going Ahead as Planned
- That talk will be in French
- At This Pace (and Rate) It Won't Take Long for Android to Unseat Windows in Russia
- Operating System Market Share Russian Federation
- [Video] The High Cost of High-Level Tools and High-Level Programming Languages
- Windows and Microsoft-style teaching remain a barrier to simple programming
- Linux and Linux Foundation Leftovers
- Some more Linux news
- Africa is Still Android
- Operating System Market Share Africa: May 2024
- Windows Falls to 10% in Uganda, It Was 94% in 2010
- Microsoft fell from market dominance to (soon) single digit (percent-wise).
- Grouping Our Archives by Week
- No more 'numbers lottery', the clustering is based on dates
- [Video] LinuxFest Northwest is Letting GAFAM Take Over (and Why It's Hard to Resist)
- Microsoft and LinuxFest Northwest
- Links 14/05/2024: Bounties on Terrible Patents, China Censors Dissidents Internationally via Attack Dogs
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 14/05/2024: Server Failure Swallows rawtext.club
- Links for the day
- Links 14/05/2024: SoftBank and ARM Chasing Hype, "Why Are You Working?"
- Links for the day
- Links 14/05/2024: Microsoft Edelman Works for Climate Change Deniers, NATO Draws a Cyber Red Line in Tensions With Russia
- Links for the day
- Feasibility of Self-Hosting is About More Than Speeds
- Speed helps, but the Internet (Net) is a global, interconnected system that no single person or company or government fully controls
- EPO: Language of Conflict
- A letter about this has already been sent
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, May 13, 2024
- IRC logs for Monday, May 13, 2024
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- Watching Our Videos Before We Write Articles for Them
- It has long been possible
- Microsoft is Measured at Lower Than Apple in Niger (Of Course Android Dominates)
- Niger's OS share (as measured by Web sites) is subjected to significant fluctuations because it's not highly connected
- Refuting the Ludicrous, Laughable Idea I Don't (or Cannot) Code
- I've written code for 30 years
- [Meme] "Talk is Cheap. Show Me the Code." - Linus Torvalds
- be like Chad
- Windows in Chad: Going Extinct
- From 100% to 1%?
- Doing the Site From Home (What I Always Wanted to Do)
- Even some of the hosting was done from home (since 2020)