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Founders Assembly
Summary record of Fellows roundtable 6
Chair: Robert Nikic, Advisory Council Chair, presiding
Sittings: Asia-Pacific, 06:00 UTC; Europe/Africa/Americas, 16:00 UTC
Attendance: The Assembly-wide membership register on the date recorded 1,366 seated members across 49 countries.
Agenda: (a) the role and working methods of the Fellows; (b) the first adopted council standard and the transition from adoption to engagement with decision-makers; (c) preparation for the Cashflow Council consultation; (d) cross-council handling of member reports and evidence; and (e) actions and the next session.
The sixth Fellows roundtable met in two sittings on 20 August 2026, at 06:00 UTC for the Asia-Pacific sitting and 16:00 UTC for the Europe/Africa/Americas sitting. Robert Nikic chaired as Advisory Council Chair. The two sittings were treated as parts of one roundtable, with a common agenda and a consolidated record. The chair recalled that Fellows support the Assembly’s evidence and deliberative work. They do not substitute for council review, public consultation or an Assembly ballot.
The chair opened by situating the discussion in the Assembly’s current work. The Platform Fairness Standard had been adopted by the Assembly on 13 August as RC/PL/2026/1. The Cashflow Council’s draft 15-Day Pay Standard had completed drafting, with its public consultation scheduled to open on 25 August. The chair noted that these were distinct procedural stages: adoption of the Platform standard did not determine the outcome of the Cashflow process, and Fellows were not being asked to prejudge any future ballot.
The Secretariat recalled the agreed process for each problem: reports are assessed through the five-part pattern test of Volume, Frequency, Consistency, Spread and Corroboration; a draft fix is prepared; the public is consulted; the Assembly votes; and, where adopted, letters are sent to the chief executives able to adopt the requested practice. The Secretariat tracks each CEO seat as Proposed, Letter sent, Delivered, Replied, Signed or Empty chair. Fellows were asked to help make the evidence and process legible without treating an individual member’s account as proof of a general pattern.
Mr. Arjun Nair of Kochi, India, speaking as a Fellow, said that the Platform Council’s work showed the importance of converting a familiar complaint into a bounded request. He described the practical value of specifying what a seller should receive before a restriction or payout hold: written notice, a specific reason, review by a person and a time limit for a hold. He emphasized that a standard should state the requested practice in terms that a small business can check, rather than rely on broad assurances of fairness.
Ms. Lila Chen of Kaohsiung, Taiwan, said that consistent wording across countries was important to members who sell through services operating in more than one market. She recommended that the Secretariat keep the adopted text distinct from explanatory material, so that translations and summaries do not accidentally create additional obligations or weaken the adopted request. She also urged the Fellows to flag where a member story describes an outcome but does not establish whether the cause was an automated decision, an individual review or a policy change.
Ms. Amina Diop of Dakar, Senegal, said that a member submitting a report should be able to understand what happens next without being asked to disclose a business name publicly. She supported maintaining anonymity unless a member chooses a public seat, and proposed that consultation materials explain how a report contributes to pattern analysis without promising that every report will be independently investigated. She also asked that the Secretariat continue to use general descriptions of counterparties in personal accounts, rather than naming businesses in allegations.
Mr. Gabriel Okafor of Accra, Ghana, said that consultation quality depends on inviting responses from people affected by the proposal and from those expected to put it into practice. In his view, a comment count alone cannot show whether a consultation reached different kinds of small businesses or whether comments raised new evidence. He recommended a published synthesis that distinguishes support, objections, implementation concerns and evidence gaps, while protecting contributors who do not wish to be identified.
Ms. Sofia Marin of Valparaíso, Chile, said that clear deadlines and careful version control were especially important when a draft moves from consultation to ballot. She recommended that each consultation record identify the draft under discussion, the opening and closing dates, and the route by which a revised text will be presented. She cautioned that a revision should respond to the substance of comments and should not make a material change invisible through a change in wording alone.
Mr. Tomasz Zieliński of Kraków, Poland, said that the five-part pattern test provides useful discipline across councils, but its application should be transparent enough for members to understand. He recommended that councils describe where evidence is strong, where it is incomplete and what would change the assessment. He also stressed that corroboration need not mean that every account is identical: different accounts may support a common pattern while differing in the details of how it occurred.
Ms. Farah Al-Hassan of Amman, Jordan, said that cross-council work should identify overlapping effects without merging different problems into one standard. A payment hold may affect cash flow, but the reasons for the hold and the payment obligation at issue may belong to separate analyses. She recommended that council reports make referrals explicit, so that evidence relevant to another council can be signposted with the contributor’s consent and without double-counting a single report as multiple independent accounts.
Mr. Mateo Rojas of Medellín, Colombia, said that small-business members need practical explanations of what an adopted standard asks a decision-maker to change. He recommended pairing the formal text with a short implementation summary that identifies the requested action, the event that triggers it and the information a business should receive. He noted that a summary must remain faithful to the adopted text and should not imply that a standard is already law or that a CEO has accepted it.
Ms. Njeri Wanjiku of Nairobi, Kenya, said that the post-adoption stage requires accurate tracking and restraint. She supported recording the date a letter is sent and the date it is delivered, but advised against interpreting silence as a response. The chair confirmed that, as of the roundtable date, the Secretariat had no reply on record to the letters issued concerning the Platform Fairness Standard. The record would therefore show the applicable seat status without attributing a position to any recipient.
Mr. Haruto Sato of Osaka, Japan, observed that the request for reasons before restriction has points of comparison in existing regulatory approaches. The European Union’s Platform-to-Business Regulation provides for a statement of reasons when a business user’s service is restricted or suspended; it also provides for at least 30 days’ notice before termination of the whole service, subject to the regulation’s conditions.1 He said that such comparisons can help explain the practical issue, but should not be presented as proof that the Assembly’s standard is already binding in every country.
Ms. Priya Menon of Bengaluru, India, said the Cashflow Council’s consultation should make the proposed standard’s scope easy to identify. The draft asks large buyers to pay small suppliers within 15 days of an undisputed invoice, apply automatic interest when payment is late and publish payment times. She recommended that consultation prompts invite comments on each element separately, including the meaning of an undisputed invoice, workable publication methods and the treatment of late-payment interest. She stressed that respondents should be asked for implementation evidence, not only a general statement of support or opposition.
Mr. Elias Haddad of Beirut, Lebanon, said that members with experience of late payments may face different contractual and administrative conditions. A consultation should make space for those differences without losing sight of the common request. He recommended that the Cashflow Council label cases by the issue they illuminate and avoid suggesting that one member’s experience represents all suppliers. He further proposed that the synthesis identify which comments concern the requested 15-day period and which raise separate issues, such as invoice disputes or the means of reporting payment performance.
Ms. Grace Ndlovu of Harare, Zimbabwe, said that Fellows could assist by reviewing consultation materials for clarity before publication, while leaving the council responsible for the draft and the Assembly responsible for any ballot. She recommended plain-language checks across all seven councils, especially where a proposal uses terms that may have different meanings in ordinary business practice. She said this review should identify questions and ambiguities rather than silently rewrite a council’s proposal.
The chair summarized the discussion as advisory. Participants supported preserving a visible distinction between member testimony, pattern-test findings, draft requests, consultation responses and adopted standards. They also supported maintaining anonymity by default, making evidence limitations understandable, and recording the status of CEO seats precisely. No participant proposed that the Fellows roundtable amend RC/PL/2026/1 or decide the outcome of the forthcoming Cashflow consultation.
The roundtable noted the legal and institutional context without treating it as a substitute for the Assembly’s own process. The European Union’s regulation provides a reference point on reasons for restricting or suspending business users, but the Platform Fairness Standard asks for protections framed for every country in which a platform operates.1 The roundtable agreed that future explanatory material should distinguish existing legal requirements from the Assembly’s proposed or adopted practice, and should identify the jurisdiction to which a legal case applies.
The roundtable recorded the following procedural conclusions: (a) Fellows may review clarity and evidence presentation, but do not alter council texts or decide ballots; (b) consultation syntheses should separate evidence, positions and implementation concerns; (c) reports should not be counted twice merely because they are relevant to more than one council; (d) public materials should not identify a member or their business unless the member has chosen to be identified; and (e) CEO correspondence should be reported through the published seat-tracking categories, without implying a reply where none is on record.
Participants also noted that the Platform Fairness Standard was adopted by an Assembly ballot and that the next formal stage was correspondence with the relevant CEO seats. The Secretariat had issued the letters on 20 August. The roundtable did not make a finding about how any recipient would respond, nor did it ask any Fellow to speak on behalf of a recipient. The chair said that any subsequent change in a seat’s status should be recorded from verifiable correspondence and not inferred from public commentary or the passage of time.
On the Cashflow consultation, the roundtable recommended that the Council publish the consultation draft with a short explanation of the three central elements, the dates for receiving comments and a clear statement that the text remained open to comment. Fellows could offer a clarity review if requested by the Council. They would not screen or rank individual submissions, and the Council would retain responsibility for assessing the consultation record and presenting any resulting revision through the established Assembly process.
The roundtable considered how to preserve comparability between council evidence records. Participants recommended that public summaries state what is being counted, the period covered and whether the number refers to reports, members, comments or co-signers. They cautioned against presenting a report total as a count of unique affected businesses unless the underlying method supports that description. The Secretariat was asked to retain the five-part test as the common reference while allowing councils to explain how each element applies to the specific practice under review.
The chair confirmed that no policy standard, amendment or ballot result was adopted at the roundtable. Its conclusions and recommendations were advisory and would be transmitted to the Secretariat and relevant councils for consideration. Any change to an adopted standard would require the applicable council and Assembly procedures; any decision on the Cashflow draft would follow its consultation and ballot process.
Decisions and action items
Decision: The Fellows roundtable’s role is advisory. Council drafting, public consultation and Assembly voting remain with the bodies assigned those responsibilities under the Rules of Procedure.
Decision: Public summaries should distinguish reports, unique members, consultation comments and co-signers, and should state the scope of the count where known.
Action: The Secretariat will circulate the roundtable’s recommendations to the Platform and Cashflow Councils, including the recommendations on clarity, anonymity, version control and consultation synthesis. Owner: Secretariat.
Action: The Platform Council will continue the post-adoption correspondence process and the Secretariat will maintain the CEO seat record using the established status categories. No reply will be recorded without verifiable correspondence. Owners: Platform Council and Secretariat.
Action: Before the Cashflow consultation opens, the Cashflow Council may use Fellows’ clarity recommendations to review whether the consultation material separates the 15-day payment request, automatic interest and publication of payment times. The Council retains responsibility for the final consultation material. Owner: Cashflow Council.
Action: Fellows will send any proposed wording or evidence-presentation corrections to the Secretariat for referral to the relevant council; they will not make edits directly to council drafts. Owner: Fellows, coordinated by the Secretariat.
Next session
The next Fellows roundtable was set for 17 September 2026, with the Secretariat to confirm the sitting arrangements and circulate an agenda. The next session would review the launch of the Cashflow consultation and consider any cross-council questions raised through the continuing evidence process. It would not prejudge the consultation outcome or an Assembly ballot.
Robert NikicAdvisory Council Chair, presiding
Notes and sources
Sources
This document has no standing until adopted under the Founders Charter. Reseated Councils is not affiliated with the United Nations.