EMPHASIS-PREP Deliverable D5.6: Governance and Statutes for the EMPHASIS Operational Phase

Executive Summary

A critical component of the work within EMPHASIS-PREP work package 5 is the drafting of governance options and statutes for the EMPHASIS Operational Phase. It is vital that the development of these aspects of EMPHASIS are done with ample opportunities for ministry stakeholders (via the EMPHASIS Interim General Assembly (IGA)) to feedback on key features and legal requirements.

A prerequisite of progress within these tasks revolve around important decision which require IGA ratification, specifically the decision on an Operational Phase legal entity. COVID-19 represented a challenge to the original decision-making timeline for these considerations and as such A decision on this was reached during the 4^th EMPHASIS IGA meeting (March-2021). As such there was a knock-on delay to decision on EMPHASIS Operational Phase strategy, which in turn has delayed the finalisation of aspects of this deliverable.

Given the sensitive status of discussion with the EMPHASIS IGA it has been agree with the EMPHASIS Project Officer that once the statutes (and thus governance structure) have been approved by the IGA, the final version will publish on the EMPHASIS homepage.