Report of the Disciplinary Committee

The Disciplinary Committee (DC) hereby informs you of the key positions which it has taken – mainly through its Chair – in connection with the planned reform of the disciplinary system, and which have been set out in letters, e‑mails, forum contributions and orally at Council 101e.

1. Basic position: reform yes, but with clearly recognisable added value

The DC does not reject a reform of the disciplinary system. On the contrary, it supports careful modernisation, in particular where significant weaknesses have emerged in practice (above all at the level of Disciplinary Board proceedings).

At the same time, the DC takes the view that a completely new first‑instance system should only be introduced if it can be expected to function significantly better than the existing system – not if it is merely “different”. In this sense, the DC also supports the option of a “small” reform of the current system, focussing specifically on eliminating clearly identified deficiencies rather than undertaking a comprehensive reorganisation that leaves many questions open.

2. Independence and self‑governance of the disciplinary body

The DC has repeatedly emphasised that DC/DB are not an administrative department of epi, but a court‑like body responsible for professional supervision. From this, the DC derives several principles:

• The disciplinary body should be functionally independent, i.e. its decisions should not appear to be driven by day‑to‑day political majorities or internal association politics.
• A central element of this independence is that, once its members have been elected by Council, the body elects its own Chair. This corresponds to common practice in many professional and disciplinary courts.
• The DC should be able to draw up its own Additional Rules of Procedure; legal coherence is ensured by embedding these rules in the higher‑level framework and by cooperation with the EPO disciplinary instances.
• The composition of the DC from epi members from all EPC states has proved its worth: the members are familiar with the professional realities in different countries and can thus contribute to a uniform and, at the same time, well‑informed application of the rules.

Against this background, the DC views certain elements of the reform proposals critically, in particular those which:

• expressly assign the election of the DC Chair and Deputy Chair to Council,
• shift decisions on anonymous complaints and the shaping of key procedural issues more strongly to the Presidium/Board and Council, and
• systematically provide for the use of non‑epi members as legally qualified members in the DC, although the DC has so far worked entirely with epi members and the external expert did not criticise this structure.

From the DC’s perspective, these elements tend to weaken, rather than strengthen, the self‑governance and perceived independence of the disciplinary body.

3. Specific substantive concerns regarding the current reform package (examples)

From the “list of weaknesses” submitted by the DC, a few points can be highlighted by way of example:

Election and dependence of the Chair
The draft links the appointment of the DC Chair even more closely to Council majorities. The DC is concerned that the position of Chair will thereby move closer to a “political” office, instead of being perceived as an expression of internal, judge‑like self‑organisation.

Handling of anonymous complaints
The DC is in favour of not excluding anonymous complaints across the board, but – like other complaints – examining them on the basis of the facts and evidence presented. Responsibility for this should lie with the first instance of the disciplinary system, with clear deadlines and procedural rules. In the DC’s view, the current draft leaves too little room for appropriate and consistent handling of such complaints by the disciplinary body itself.

Design and practical operability of the new system
In several respects it remains unclear to the DC how the proposed system is supposed to work in practice. There is concern that a formally “modernised” system could in fact prove more cumbersome or less predictable than the current one, in that structures from the existing DB – which there have contributed to lengthy proceedings – are now to be transferred into the new DC/DB.

Transparency and comprehensibility for the members
The reform package is complex, spread over several sets of rules and not always available in a consolidated, easily understandable form. The DC considers it necessary that the final amendments be presented in a clear, linguistically checked and consolidated version before the profession can vote on them and then has to live with their consequences.

4. Working methods and involvement of professional expertise

The DC has repeatedly pointed out that active members of the disciplinary bodies have so far been involved in the working structures only to a limited extent:

• The DC and its members were admitted to one online meeting and were able to express their views there,
• but they were not included, as experienced practitioners, in the decisive negotiation and decision‑making rounds on the future structure of the system.

In the DC’s view, it would be more sensible to set up a broadly based working group, with representatives of both “sides” and the participation of experienced DC members, in order to develop a proposal capable of achieving a broad consensus within Council.

5. DC recommendation for the way forward

In summary, the DC recommended – but council C101e decided in its second vote on the same topic against:

• not to adopt the present reform package, in its current form, as the final solution;
• instead, to remedy the clearly identified shortcomings of the existing system in a targeted manner in the short term (“small reform”) and/or
• in parallel, and with sufficient time and a transparent composition, to work on an improved, consensus‑oriented overall draft which preserves the independence and self‑governance of the disciplinary body and whose practical added value compared with the status quo is clearly recognisable.

The DC remain now in function until the Dubrovnik Council Meeting. There a new DC will be elected and – in case that the Admin Council of the EPOrg adopts the proposal for amendment – in January 2027 a new DC with the name Disciplinary Board of epi will be installed. The current DC is disappointed about the outcome of this hasty “reform process”, as its valuable input was only partially considered by the reform proponents.

Many organisational matters are still open to be defined for the new DB of the epi and more to be reported about this process can be expected in the near future.

Until then the Disciplinary Committee stays on duty and treats all complaints with the same quality and interest as in the last decades.

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