Governance
Positive Money Europe has been set up as a Belgian non-profit association (ASBL) since the end of 2018. Please find below more details on our governance structure.
General Assembly
The General Assembly is Positive Money Europe’s highest governance body. It appoints board members and key executive managers, ratifies our annual accounts and can adopt changes in our article of associations.
Members
The association’s general assembly is made up of full members and associate members (who cannot vote during general assembly meetings). For the moment, Positive Money Europe’s membership is composed of seven private individuals who are all full members. To become a member of Positive Money Europe, individuals have to be co-opted by the General Assembly.
Board of Administration
Positive Money Europe’s board of administration is a non-executive body responsible for the organisation’s vision, mission, strategic direction, finances and governance. The Board has the authority to appoint and/or dismiss the Executive Director, and to hold him or her accountable towards the organisation’s documented strategy and targets. Currently the Board of Administration is composed of four members, who are all unremunerated and acting on their personal capacity. You can see the list and bios of our current board members in the section below.
As the organisation grows, we are seeking to recruit up to three people to join the board of administrators in 2023. We are looking, in particular, for people with experience or expertise in one of the following areas: governance management, financial management, equality and diversity, Belgian law, campaigning, movement building and community organising, or human resources.
Relationship with the international Positive Money movement
Positive Money Europe is part of an international movement, which has been operating in the UK since 2010 and in the US since 2021. Even though each legal entity acts autonomously from each other, a memorandum of understanding ensures we pursue a similar vision in a spirit of mutual cooperation in key strategic areas.
Board
FRAN BOAIT
Executive Director, Positive Money UK
Fran has led the UK and international expansion of Positive Money, a non-profit think tank, which campaigns for systemic change of the money and banking system to support a fair, sustainable, and democratic economy. Positive Money Europe launched in 2018, and Positive Money US will hopefully be set up in 2020. Committed to wider financial reform, she is also a Director of Finance Watch, a Senior Fellow at the Finance Innovation Lab, and an Advisor to Transparency Taskforce. Fran was also recognised as one of the most ‘Inspirational Women in the City’ 2017 by Brummell Magazine. Fran has an MSci and PhD from Cambridge University in Geophysics. Fran has also worked at various international organisations including the UN, Greenpeace, and BP.
JACK EASTON
Chartered Accountant
Jack has spent most of his career as a Chartered Accountant in practice. For 25 years he was the Technical and Training partner at UHY Hacker Young in London, with a wide ranging quality and compliance remit. In addition, he was also the Ethics Partner, and in his last two years at UHY he was the Audit Partner for the firm’s leading charity and not-for-profit clients. An environmentalist at heart, Jack was one of the founders of “Sustainable St Albans” and has three times been the Green Party’s parliamentary candidate for St Albans.
GREG FORD
Media and communications specialist
Greg is a freelance media and communications specialist. A former Head of Communications at Finance Watch, the Brussels-based NGO working on financial regulation, he advises on media relations and communications strategy. He was a financial journalist for ten years, working for a subsidiary of the Financial Times Group, and before that for PwC as an international tax and trade advisor. He studied law at UCL (LLB) and King’s College London (LLM).
SOTIRIA THEODOROPOULOU
Senior Researcher
Dr. Sotiria Theodoropoulou is a senior researcher and the head of the European economic, employment and social policies research unit at the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) in Brussels. Her recent research interests have been focusing on the impact of fiscal austerity on economic performance and labour markets in Europe.
She is the editor of the ‘Labour market policies in the era of pervasive austerity’ book. She earned her Ph.D. in European Political Economy from the London School of Economics and Political Science, where she also taught economic analysis of the EU for several years.
Prior to joining the ETUI she held positions as research associate at Chatham House (London) and an economic policy analyst at the European Policy Centre (Brussels).
For the time being, all current members of the board are also sitting on Positive Money UK’s board. We are aiming to expand and diversify the membership of the Positive Money Europe board in the coming months.
Annual / Biennial reports
January 2020 – December 2021
January 2019 – December 2019