Hello Tahar et al., and thanks Desiree for bringing this to the list. While what I will say is well understood by many in the community, it's still helpful to keep in mind the dual role the RIPE NCC plays, and the boundaries that are necessary for those roles to function effectively.
The RIPE NCC has a responsibility to support and defend Internet technical coordination: to explain how the Internet’s core works technically, why open standards and neutral coordination and registration of Internet Number Resources matter, and why global interoperability is a prerequisite for innovation, competition, and sustainable development. This includes engagement with IGOs, governments, and regulators across our service, as well as institutions at EU and national level, and contributing technical expertise and operational reality to policy discussions. For those who are interested, the positions and submissions the RIPE NCC has made to UN, EU, and broader Internet governance processes are publicly available on the RIPE NCC website. https://www.ripe.net/community/internet-governance/multi-stakeholder-engagement/ripe-ncc-contributions-to-external-consultations/ At the same time, the RIPE NCC also serves as the secretariat to the RIPE community. In that role, it does not act as a political actor or lobby on behalf of the community. Instead, it enables bottom-up, community-led processes, provides factual and technical input, and supports the outcomes that the community itself develops through its Working Groups. On “Fair Share” specifically, we’ve seen a strong example of this community-led approach already: this Working Group convened a small task team (through an open call) that produced a substantive response to the European Commission’s consultation (May 2023). That piece of work came directly out of the WG, drawing on community expertise, and the RIPE NCC supported the process in its secretariat role. https://www.ripe.net/media/documents/RIPE_Cooperation_Working_Group_Small_Task_Team_response_to_the_European_Commis_V5kMzDp.pdf This is why I agree with Julf's point: this Working Group is precisely the right place for the community to come together, assess policy developments like “Fair Share”, and articulate shared concerns or principles grounded in technical and operational realities. When the community develops a common position, the RIPE NCC can fully support that work in its role as secretariat including by helping ensure those perspectives are understood in relevant policy forums. The RIPE NCC can also offer the co-chairs the option to organize open houses or similar online sessions on these topics as an extension to the discussion on the mailing list and at the RIPE meetings, should that be useful for broadening participation and engagement across the community. https://www.ripe.net/meetings/open-house/ Regards Hisham Ibrahim On Sun, 25 Jan 2026 at 12:47, Johan Helsingius via cooperation-wg < [email protected]> wrote: > On 23/01/2026 10:11 pm, Tahar Schaa wrote: > > I am firmly convinced that the RIPE NCC as an organization and the RIPE > > community must finally become significantly more politically active and > > engage in more lobbying, because the mechanisms are what they are. > > > > If you only concern yourself with IPv6 address allocation schemes, > > routing policies, and open-source repositories with cool code (which I > > much prefer), then you shouldn't be surprised when the EU Commission > > ignores you as an organization and regularly makes terrible decisions. > > > > Someone has to go to those canapé receptions... > > Seems RIPE NCC needs to get better at promoting their work on > interaction with the EU. They do go to some of those canapé > receptions, and even organize some of their own, such as the > annual Government Roundtable in Brussels, where the chairs > of this WG also try to attend. > > But yes, this is very much what this WG is all about. > > Julf > > ----- > To unsubscribe from this mailing list or change your subscription options, > please visit: > https://mailman.ripe.net/mailman3/lists/cooperation-wg.ripe.net/ > As we have migrated to Mailman 3, you will need to create an account with > the email matching your subscription before you can change your settings. > More details at: https://www.ripe.net/membership/mail/mailman-3-migration/
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