Hi all,
in light of the recent votes which our legal counsel urged the board to run immediately, as one of the required preconditions to be able have a valid budget, a clarification on the declaration of potential CoI follows.
It has been confirmed by our legal counsel that, as one of the issues with the budgeting process, the ESC technical budgeting procedure had not been followed as advised. One of the main issues is the lack of CoI declaration by ESC members.
I’d like to point out that this is not an issue created by TDF’s members of staff, who diligently worked on the process, but a lack of conflict declaration on the side of potential bidders which was clearly stated in the various versions of the Technical Budgeting Process as a required step.
The ESC has to adopt the form of CoI declaration previously shared and have ALL the ESC members who elect to vote or that apply to be a member of the Select Committee to make their statement according to it:
Some have expressed doubts as to its phrasing of the second bullet-point, it can be changed by using either of the following:
“none of the above intends to place bids on the tenders resulting from the Technical Budget and, on my honour, that I am not aware that any such potential situation could reasonably materialise between the date of the vote and the date of tendering”
OR
Entity(-ies) [A-Z] intend(s) to bid for the tenders resulting from the Technical Budget;
Ciao
Paolo