Minimal steering, entirely visible
Five to seven people, one vote each, sitting in a personal capacity, never as representatives of an organisation, even when they lead one. What we give up in structure, we give back in transparency.
Four profiles, always present
Terms of office
Three years, renewable once, six years in total, without exception, founders included. Renewal by thirds: the committee is never renewed all at once. A public call for applications for each vacant seat, with the criteria and the profile sought.
A standing committee no one ever leaves is a club. The term limit is what makes the difference, and the public call is what distinguishes a steering committee from a circle of friends.
The four anti-capture rules
- The four profiles are represented at all times. A profile left vacant for more than six months suspends any structuring decision.
- Two members at most per type of profile. No one holds a majority through their type alone.
- One member at most per organisation, the initiator included.
- Those who earn income from training in accompaniment never hold the majority.
The fourth is the most important, and the one an outside observer will check first. It targets the schools, but also the practitioners and union figures who train.
External oversight
Three people, none of them a member of the committee or of an organisation that sits on it. A three-year term. They take part in no decision.
Two missions
Check that CARPEA applies what it demands. Compliance of procedures with the texts: handling of memberships, respect for the adversarial process and for deadlines, effective publication of what must be published, respect for the composition rules. An annual finding, published unfiltered.
Raise the alarm on rigour and on the boundary of care. Flagging a claim that is insufficiently supported in an Alliance text, a practice accepted without scrutiny, a wording that blurs the boundary. The committee must respond publicly within three months, it is not bound to follow, it is bound to respond.
Composition sought
A methodologist or researcher with no tie to the field · someone on the user's side · someone from a neighbouring field already structured. The first instinct will be to choose agreeable people. That is the mistake to avoid: external oversight that never disturbs anyone serves no purpose, including for those it has not disturbed.
Three guarantees written into the statutes
- No censorship possibleThe committee has no power to withhold, delay or alter a publication from the external oversight.
- Self-referralWithout authorisation or prior referral from the committee.
- Publication of silenceIf the committee does not respond within the deadline, the external oversight publishes that finding.
The committee cannot amend these guarantees: any change requires a public consultation of the members and a prior published opinion from the external oversight.
How it works
Meetings and quorum
At least four meetings a year. Notice fifteen days in advance, with agenda and documents. Quorum: four members present and at least three types of profile represented. Without that, the meeting is informative, not decision-making.
Decisions
Routine, work programme, admissions, publications: simple majority.
Structuring, revising the Framework, amending the Code or the charter, creating a criterion, opening a label, admission to the committee, budget: a qualified majority of 4 out of 5 or 5 out of 7, and the agreement of at least three different types of profile.
No abstention allowed on structuring decisions. In a body of five people, abstention is a way of not taking responsibility.
Recusal
A member takes part in neither the debate nor the vote on a matter concerning their organisation, a direct competitor, or a person with whom they have a conflict of interest. The recusal is entered in the published record.
Coordination
A coordinating function, not a chair: to convene, hold the agenda, ensure publication. It rotates every two years, cannot be held for two consecutive terms by the same type of profile, and carries no casting vote.
What the committee cannot do
- Change the composition rules on its own, or the guarantees of the external oversight.
- Reverse the publication of the Framework under an open licence, the act is irreversible.
- Issue a label before the committee is complete and before two years of actual existence.
- Carry out any training activity or sell teaching content.
- Withhold a publication from the external oversight.
- Settle a scientific controversy by a vote. The committee may publish the state of a debate; it cannot close it by majority.
The governance cannot stay fixed if the project succeeds
The committee is required to review its own organisation as soon as one of these thresholds is crossed:
- 150 members of CARPEA
- Two full terms elapsed, that is six years
- The first decision to create a label
- The first serious breach handled
The review is public, preceded by an opinion from the external oversight, and it may conclude that things stay as they are, but it must take place, and it must be reasoned.
Without this clause, the simplification would become permanent by omission: no one reopens, of their own accord, a governance that works well for those who occupy it.
What this simplification costs
We would rather write it down than let it be discovered.
The separation of functions disappears. The committee investigates what it drafts and adopts what it has investigated. The alarm mission of the external oversight and the publication of texts a month before adoption offset this in part, not entirely.
Representativeness is weaker. Five to seven people do not represent a whole field; they get it started.
What is gained in exchange: a body that actually exists, meets, decides and produces, rather than an elegant architecture that never comes together. Alliances die of inertia more often than of capture.