Europeana Network Association welcomes its nine new Members Councillors

We are happy to announce the results of the 2020 Europeana Network Association (ENA) Members Council elections. Of the 35 candidates who came forward in this year’s elections, our members chose nine of them to fill the open seats in the Members Council between 11 and 20 November.

On behalf of the Elections and Voting Committee, we are excited to introduce the following new Members Council representatives (in alphabetical order):

Alexandra Angeletaki, Cosmina Berta, Larissa Borck, Milena Dobreva, Evelien Hauwaerts, Georgia Manolopoulou, Fred Saunderson, and Nienke van Schaverbeke.

In addition, Councillor Peter Soemers has been re-elected. Over the past three years, he has proven his dedication and experience, and we are delighted to welcome him back for one more term.

Congratulations to all our elected representatives!

We are pleased to see that the new Council represents a broad range of interests and expertise, and creates a good balance of backgrounds, nationalities and sectors in the ENA. We look forward to the new Councillors taking on active roles, engaging in and leading ENA activities and steering the work of the six ENA communities.

The newly elected Councillors will serve a three-year term. The rest of the Councillors, elected in 2018, will continue to serve for another year. We will be introducing them throughout 2021 in our Pro series ‘Professionals in Focus’ but feel free to get in touch with them personally as well.

Elections and voting process

The 2020 elections campaign started on 1 September. Voting opened during this year’s General Assembly meeting on 11 November and ran until 20 November. Of the 2086 members, who confirmed their membership by November and were eligible to vote, 752 participated in the elections. Candidates campaigned on social media under the #EuropeanaElects hashtag. We recorded a 36% percent participation rate.

Together with choosing their new representatives, ENA members voted in favour of key Association documents including the ENA Annual Report 2020, Activity Plan for 2021, Financial Report 2019 and Provisional Budget for 2021.

Electing the new Management Board

The new Council will be composed of 36 elected members who will officially start working together on 1 January 2021. The newly elected Councillors will also be invited to join the third Council meeting of the year on 3-4 December 2020.

One of their first tasks will be electing a new Management Board. By early January 2021, all 36 Councillors will have had an opportunity to step forward to be elected as two of the six Board members. The elections will take place in mid January, internally within the Council. We will come back to you with the results by the end of January.

Thank you

We would like to thank all the candidates who ran for this election, and hope to see you remain as active members in our communities - and possibly campaign again in the future!

We would also like to sincerely thank those Councillors who completed their terms and will be leaving the Council after three or six years for all their expertise and fantastic work: Stephan Bartholmei, Ellen Euler, Kate Fernie, Sara Di Giorgio, Marco de Niet, and Marco Streefkerk.

And finally, we are grateful to all the voters who dedicated time to approve the formal documents and choose their new representatives. We invite you to have a look at the complete final results.