Summary record of the ninth session of the Platform Council

Agenda

1. Opening of the ninth session and confirmation of its scope.
2. Review of PL-001 implementation and the status of letters transmitting the adopted Platform Fairness Standard.
3. Consideration of CF-001 following the close of its public consultation.
4. Review of the open FP-001 consultation and arrangements for receiving comments.
5. Status of evidence and drafting work across the remaining council workstreams.
6. Decisions, action items and date of the next session.

Summary of proceedings

1. Ms. Nadia Cherif opened the Asia-Pacific sitting at 06:00 UTC and the Europe/Africa/Americas sitting at 16:00 UTC. He stated that both sittings would use the same agenda and that this record would consolidate their proceedings. He recalled that the Council’s purpose was to describe recurring practices and propose standards, rather than to assess the conduct of a single company. Members were reminded not to identify their own businesses or make unsupported allegations about named firms.

2. The Chair noted that the Council’s membership roll stood at 504 members from 49 countries. The wider Assembly register, as of 14 October, recorded 1,710 seated members in 49 countries and 5,236 reports from 50 countries. He emphasized that these were register totals, not a count of participants in either sitting. The Council’s records did not include a consolidated attendance headcount.

3. Mr. Nikic introduced the agenda and distinguished matters that were current on 14 October from later procedural milestones. PL-001 had been adopted on 13 August as RC/PL/RES/2026/1. The consultation on FP-001, opened on 13 October, was underway. The CF-001 consultation had closed on 24 September, but its adoption ballot had not yet opened. He asked members to avoid describing any draft or pending process as an adopted Council position.

4. Ms. Amina Yusuf of Lagos, Nigeria, reviewed PL-001. She said the adopted Standard sought written notice, a specific reason, review by a person and a time limit on payout holds before an account suspension, listing removal, payout hold or fee change. She highlighted its application across every country in which a platform operates. In her view, the value of the text depended on whether an affected business could understand what had happened and what step it could take next.

5. Mr. Mateo Rojas of Bogotá, Colombia, described the importance of keeping the four protections together. He said that notice without a specific reason could leave a member unable to identify the issue; a reason without human review could leave an error unexamined; and a review without a time limit could fail to address the immediate consequences of a payout hold. His remarks were recorded as a member’s explanation of the Standard, not as a report about a named platform.

6. Ms. Leila Haddad of Tunis, Tunisia, asked that communications about PL-001 make clear that the Standard was addressed to platform practices and did not replace legal rights available in any jurisdiction. The Chair agreed that public summaries should describe the Standard as a Council-adopted request for consistent safeguards, and should not imply that every jurisdiction already required the same protections.

7. The Council reviewed the status of the transmission letters issued on 20 August. The letters had been addressed to seven chief executives and delivered between 24 and 26 August. The tracker should continue to distinguish “Proposed”, “Letter sent”, “Delivered”, “Replied”, “Signed” and “Empty chair”. Mr. Nikic reported that no reply was entered in the tracker for the seven seats at the time of the session. Members were instructed not to characterize silence as agreement or refusal.

8. Ms. Elena Martín of Valencia, Spain, said that the seat tracker was useful only if the status terms remained factual and consistent. She proposed that any future public update identify the date of the last status check and separate confirmation of delivery from confirmation that a recipient had considered or accepted the Standard. The Chair accepted this as a drafting point for the Secretariat’s next tracker update.

9. Mr. Arjun Menon of Kochi, India, referred to the Council’s report totals. The Platform Council had received 1,954 reports from 50 countries. The median amount at stake was approximately US$4,104. The report register distinguished 1,095 account-suspension situations and 859 funds-held situations. He cautioned that the categories describe reported situations and should not be presented as independently verified findings about individual cases.

10. Ms. Beatriz Costa of Recife, Brazil, noted that the Platform Council’s report distribution included 232 reports from the United States, 119 from Germany, 114 from Brazil, 104 from the Philippines, 104 from Mexico, 100 from Spain, 92 from the United Kingdom and 88 from France. She said that the spread of reports across countries supported asking for protections that were not limited to one national market, while the Council should continue to avoid treating a report count as a measure of prevalence in the population.

11. Mr. Nikic recorded that the Platform Council’s team-size data showed 36 per cent of reporting members as operating alone, 43 per cent with teams of 2–9, 17 per cent with teams of 10–49 and 4 per cent with teams of 50–249. The register recorded 75 Platform Council reports in the preceding 30 days. Members agreed that these figures could inform descriptions of who may be affected, provided that the reference date and reporting basis were stated.

12. On CF-001, Ms. Noura Al-Kuwari of Doha, Qatar, summarized the procedural position. The consultation on the draft had closed on 24 September after receiving 362 comments. She stressed that the consultation record was not itself an adoption decision. The ballot was scheduled to open on 26 October and close on 9 November; at the date of the session, members could review the consultation process but could not report an Assembly result.

13. Mr. Kofi Mensah of Accra, Ghana, asked that any summary of consultation responses distinguish comments that supported a proposal from comments that raised qualifications, requested changes or opposed a provision. He said that totals alone would not show how the Council had treated substantive feedback. The Chair noted the request for the preparation of ballot materials and directed that no comment be attributed publicly to an identifiable member without consent.

14. Ms. Sofia Almeida of Porto, Portugal, asked that the revised ballot text be checked against the consultation record and the draft before voting opened. She stated that members should be able to see what changed, what remained unchanged and the reason for any material revision. The Chair recorded this as a process request and assigned the preparation of a concise change note to the Secretariat, subject to the applicable publication and ballot timetable.

15. On FP-001, Mr. Nikic stated that the public consultation had opened on 13 October and would remain open through 12 November. The Council had not adopted a position on the consultation draft. Members were invited to submit evidence and comments through the established process, including concerns about how provisions might operate for small businesses with different staffing and administrative capacity.

16. Ms. Priya Shah of Leicester, United Kingdom, emphasized that consultation comments should identify the practical situation being described and distinguish first-hand experience from interpretation or proposed remedy. She recommended that contributors omit names of their businesses and remove unnecessary identifying details. The Chair confirmed that the Council’s established approach remained to describe practices at an appropriate level of generality and to assess submissions through the relevant review process.

17. Mr. Dawit Bekele of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, asked how members would know whether a submission had been received. The Chair assigned the Secretariat to maintain the ordinary submission acknowledgement process and to publish a closing notice when the consultation ended. He clarified that neither the receipt of a submission nor its inclusion in a consultation count would constitute endorsement of its claims.

18. On Trade (TR), Ms. Linh Nguyễn of Đà Nẵng, Viet Nam, reported that work remained at the evidence and drafting stage. The Council had not yet certified a pattern test for TR-001 on 14 October. She urged members to keep the five-part pattern test—Volume, Frequency, Consistency, Spread and Corroboration—visible in the work, and not to treat the accumulation of reports as sufficient by itself to establish a pattern.

19. Mr. Nikic confirmed that the Council’s other workstreams remained at different stages. Resilience (RS) had met four of five pattern-test components; Red Tape (RT) had met three of five; and Team (TM) had met two of five. He directed that these status descriptions remain unchanged in any session summary or dashboard update unless the relevant workstream completed and documented a further review.

20. Ms. Mariam Abdullahi of Nairobi, Kenya, said that clear status labels could prevent premature expectations among members who had submitted evidence. She recommended that each workstream’s public description state what remained unresolved rather than relying only on a numerical score. The Chair agreed that workstream updates should identify the next procedural step, while avoiding any prediction about when a pattern test would be passed.

21. During discussion of follow-up, the Council considered how the five-part test should relate to proposed fixes. Mr. Nikic restated the sequence: reports, pattern test, draft fix, public consultation, Assembly ballot and letters to the chief executives who could adopt the measure. He said that this sequence did not guarantee a particular result at any stage. Members supported preserving the separation between evidence review, drafting and ballot decisions.

22. Ms. Camila Ferreira of São Paulo, Brazil, asked that future status reports show both the current stage and the applicable date. She said this would help members distinguish a consultation that had closed from a ballot that had opened, and a draft under consideration from an adopted resolution. The Chair accepted the suggestion for the next report, subject to the Secretariat’s standard format.

23. Mr. Nikic summarized the decisions and procedural conclusions. The session took no ballot and adopted no new standard. It confirmed the status of PL-001 as adopted; recorded the CF-001 consultation as closed and its ballot as not yet open; recorded the FP-001 consultation as open; and retained the stated stages for TR, RS, RT and TM. The session further agreed that public updates should distinguish report totals from verified findings and should not infer a CEO’s position from the absence of a reply.

24. The Chair noted that the record would identify the attendance limitation rather than substitute the Council roll for a session headcount. He invited corrections to names, locations, procedural dates and the summary of remarks before publication. No member’s business was identified in the proceedings, and no statement was attributed to a company or public official.

25. The next session was scheduled for 11 November 2026, with the customary Asia-Pacific sitting at 06:00 UTC and Europe/Africa/Americas sitting at 16:00 UTC. The meeting would review the status of the CF-001 ballot after its scheduled close on 9 November, the FP-001 consultation before its scheduled close on 12 November, and any documented changes in other workstreams. The Chair cautioned that the agenda would reflect the status actually reached by that date.

Action items

Publication