Hauptversammlung 2021

Saturday 16 October

by Janet Britnell

Second time lucky! Alpenverein (Sektion) Villach originally planned to celebrate their 150th anniversary by hosting the 2020 ÖAV Hauptversammlung (HVS – AGM), but Covid 19 put a spanner in the works. As reported in the 2021 Spring Newsletter, the 2020 HVS was postponed ntil 2021. Fortunately, the 2021 Hauptversammlung was able to go ahead. About 400 delegates from sections all over Austria, and from the two Ausland sections, Britannia and Flandern, converged on the attractive, provincial town of Villach, on the banks of the River Drau in Southern Carinthia. The nearby Karawanken Alps form the boundary between Carinthia and Slovenia. It was touch-and-go, but by the Autumn, the quarantine regulations in Austria and the UK were sufficiently relaxed for Diana Rayner (then Acting Chairman); Mike Garrett (a past Chairman and IT representative); Mark Ryder (High Peaks) and myself (Hut Fund Representative and Ausland Representative on the Bundesausschuss (BA)) to attend in person.

The official programme started with the Huts and Paths Committee meeting on the Thursday afternoon. The BA met all day Friday, and workshop discussions on topical Alpenverein (AV) themes were held on the Friday afternoon. Meanwhile, the many departments of Alpenvereinshaus in Innsbruck were laying out their stalls near the main lecture hall in the Congress Centre ready for Saturday’s onslaught. Many of the meetings on the fringes of the HVS are as valuable to the sections as attending the main meeting. During Friday evening, many Landesverbände (provincial associations) meetings were held in local restaurants, including the rather more informal Ausland meeting of S. Flandern and S. Britannia representatives and friends.

At the HVS itself two Green Cross medals were awarded for outstanding service to Mountain Rescue. The Franz-Fischer Hütte (2020m) in the Radstädter Tauern, and the Hubertushaus (946m) on the Hohe Wand, in Niederösterreich, were awarded the Environmental ‘Seal of Quality’. Reports included the allocation of funds for hut maintenance in 2020 and 2021; the recommendations from the Working Group on Financing Alpine Infrastructure; progress with the online hut booking system; 20 years of the Bergwaldprojekt in which AV volunteers take part in a wide range of environmental working groups. President Ermacora’s report emphasised the essential part volunteers play in the success of the AV; the youth department reported on their project, launched in 2010, to encourage independence and healthy risk taking in younger members, summarised in the film Tage draußen! (Days outside!). After lunch the 2019 and 2020 Finance Reports and 2021 and 2022 Budgets were followed by a guest lecture on Climate Change. Bergsport announced an initiative to encourage all sections to include high quality safety training ‘SicherAmBerg’ (safety in the mountains) as part of their programmes.

The next part of the agenda listed 25 resolutions that had been submitted for the 2020 and/or 2021 HVSs. The first resolution was uncontentious, the BA recommended that the former General Secretary, Robert Renzler, should be made an Honorary Member of the AV, in recognition of his outstanding service to the AV (see NL229, Spring 2021). This was adopted, bringing the number of honorary members to 3. Then there were 4 resolutions concerning ‘Voting rights’. The number of votes each section can wield at an HVS is based on the number of members. This was last reviewed in 2004, when the maximum number of votes per section was capped at 80 based on 22,400 members; since then, membership has increased, particularly in the largest sections. The BA proposed that the maximum number of votes for any section should be capped at 189, based on 66,000 members, with a review every 5 years. This was carried and the other 3 similar resolutions were withdrawn. Then 9 sections proposed a levy of €6 on each member of non-hut owning sections to fund hut projects. The BA countered with the proposals from the working group on financing alpine infrastructure, including:

(1) from 2024 there should be a levy of €2.50 from A members and €1.50 from B members of all sections, to be paid directly into the hut budget, that would be deducted, like the AWS insurance fee, before the division of the fees between the sections and the Hauptverein (HV),

(2) the rules for qualifying for funding for hut projects will be tightened.

These BA proposals were accepted by the HVS; the other 9 resolutions, plus 8 related resolutions, had been withdrawn after intensive discussions Friday night and early Saturday. 3 other resolutions were withdrawn.

The elections followed: 3 vice presidents were re-elected, then the election of members of the BA who were co-opted by the BA in 2020 for 2021 was confirmed, followed by the election of members of the BA for 2022, including my successor Bart Vercruyssen, from S. Flandern, as Ausland representative on the BA. Finally, the appointment of the new General Secretary, Clemens Matt, who has been in post since October 2020, following co-option by the BA, was confirmed by the HVS.

Somehow, we also managed to talk to people from the HV and members of other sections, for instance Mark and Mike were able to thank Andi Bstieler for the time and commitment he and his S4 team put into developing our new membership system and website; I was able to discuss the Fragranter project with the chairman of Sektion Klagenfurt, and the Franz-Fischer-Hütte with the chairman of Sektion Lungau. Then we had to complete our ‘Locater Forms’ for re-entry to the UK, before returning to the Congress Centre in the evening for more networking at the Festabend.

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