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Due to the very intensive political environment during the European Chess Union, ECU, General Assembly in Khanty-Mansiysk in 2010, members of the general assembly had decided that it was better to postpone the decision regarding the organization of the events to a new extraordinary assembly. This new Extraordinary General Assembly of the ECU will be held in Aix-les-Bains, on March 29th, 2011. However, in addition to the topic of event organizations, the current ECU management has prepared a long list of further proposals to be discussed at Aix-les-Bains.
The topic of the proposals include the shift of event decision power from general assembly to the board, the budget, Sofia rules, dress code, Bilbao rules, and copyright for moves. We, as the Turkish Chess Federation, find all of these proposals unsound and lacking:
The shift of event decision power from general assembly to the board is unacceptable, because the board intends to pass this important proposal hastily without giving all federations sufficient time to respond.
The proposed budget changes are intended to increase the spending, whereas the ECU management has yet to attempt to collect 100,000€ worth of debts from three organizers and has yet find one Euro worth of sponsorship after their six month mandate.
Sofia rules divide the rule set of the world championship cycle, and this division hurts the image of chess; therefore, such proposal should be implemented not on a continental, but on a global level.
The dress code proposal burdens many of the smaller European chess federations financially, because it is not backed up by a continental sponsorship program.
The Bilbao rules would not only bring chaos to rating and title calculations, but also hurt the image of chess by splitting the rule set across the world championship cycle.
A copyright for moves cannot be enforced and would only discourage the media to promote chess.
We hope that you, the esteemed managers and delegates of the esteemed federations of the ECU, will be convinced by the end of this letter that these ineffectual proposals that could have very negative consequences for European and for world chess. We invite you to reject all of these proposals at the Extra Ordinary General Assembly in Aix-les-Bains.
EUROPE BELONGS US! IT IS OURS! YOU SHOULD REACT AS WELL!
Gens Una Sumus
Respectfully yours,
Ali Nihat YAZICI
President of Turkish Chess Federation
In a more detailed version of his letter TCF President says:
(Their) proposal to change the statutes is absolutely illegal, because the member federations should be informed about statute changes well in advance, so that the federations can evaluate the proposals with sufficient time on their clock to prepare their reaction. Although we have an ordinary general assembly in Crete in November, they want to change the statutes during the extraordinary general assembly in Aix-les-Bains, because they want to shift the power of ECU from the general assembly to the ECU board. Then, under the control of Mr. Danailov, the ECU board is going to use event organizations as political weapons: they will give these events to anyone they want.
Based on the arguments listed above, as the Turkish Chess Federation, we declare that if the statutes are changed in Aix-les-Bains, we will sue the ECU directly to cancel this change. This item is obviously the most important of the ECU board's proposed changes. We hope that they will understand their legal mistake and correct it by withdrawing their proposal to change the statute.
There is also an elucidation on why the copyright of moves "will only help chess disappear from newspapers – nothing else." Food for thought there.
