31st Forum of the IOTA Principal Contact Persons

This year’s Forum started with a session for newly appointed PCPs where Alix Perrignon de Troyes, the Executive Secretary of IOTA introduced the session and covered the work of IOTA. This session was designed to give new colleagues an understanding of a PCP’s responsibilities as well as the basic technical skills and knowledge required for this role. Two current PCPs from Belgium and Switzerland shared their experiences on the key functions of a PCP and crucial information about hosting an IOTA event. This was followed by the official opening address by Hilde Aerts, the acting President of Federal Public Service Finances of Belgium. In her speech, Mrs Aerts stressed the importance of collaboration and networking between the IOTA member tax administrations. She also mentioned the financing of IOTA, highlighted the new ITOTA web portal, and the importance of the work done by PCPs in helping each other work better together across borders.

During the next sessions, the Management of IOTA updated the audience on the IOTA 2024 Work Programme Activities, covered international engagement and some interesting questions allowed the Secretariat to expand on the role of the NTO and learning between organisations. The topic of the Executive Secretary’s mandate generated a lot of interest among the Forum participants. Hungary, as the Presidency of IOTA, informed the PCPs of the latest decision from the 145^th Executive Council Meeting to ask the General Assembly to vote on the prolongation of the Executive Secretary’s mandate through an electronic vote. A lively debate unfolded at this session and several members requested information about why the Executive Council had made its decision, based on a tied vote as the Presidency had to cast the vote, not to prolong the ES’s mandate, so they had some background on which to vote. As the Presidency explained, it was not authorised to share the reason behind the EC decision. Still, several EC members said it had nothing to do with the current Executive Secretary's performance since there was another candidate for the position, so some EC members wanted it to go to open competition instead of extending the current ES's mandate.  

In the latter half of the day, Mrs Perrignon de Troyes along with László Muzslay, the Manager of Business Administration and Finance of IOTA, and the members of the Financial Advisory Committee introduced the topic of financial sustainability in IOTA. They gave insights into the reasons behind the formation of the Financial Advisory Committee and its mandate and then explained the issues, outcomes, and possible options to ensure the financial sustainability of the Organisation along with the Strategy 2023-2027. The members of the FAC answered the questions raised by the audience as this session also produced a lot of debate, especially about the potential impact of the scenarios on the funding and level of attendance of the experts at the technical events. A survey is carried out to get views from the members on the options put forward by the FAC.

On the second day of the Forum, the IOTA Secretariat set up a workshop giving the PCPs a hands-on demonstration of the key functions of the new web portal and allowing them to ask questions that might occur during the first months using the new portal. The morning was spent updating the participants on this brand-new development. After an overview of the functionality, presented by László Muzslay, the meeting split into parallel group sessions where the participants had very productive sessions covering:

• Setting up their dashboard, log-in profile, search engine, bookmarks, PCP news and other features;
• The Collaborative Space;
• Key Event Functions;
• Technical Enquiries.

 In the afternoon, the Hungarian Presidency updated the attendees on the preparation for the 28^th General Assembly of IOTA in June, and Roman Bichevoy, Strategy and Institutional Development Manager of IOTA presented the Concept of Working with the Business Community. This was followed by a session where the PCPs had the opportunity to raise any issues with their country coordinators before the meeting closed with a Q&A session.

IOTA is grateful to the Belgian Team for some incredible hosting in the beautiful city of Bruges. The opportunity to see the city from 3 different levels (foot, horse-drawn carriage, and boat) combined with experiencing food from a range of culinary schools made for an exceptional experience. The 31^st PCP Forum held this year was specific in terms of logistics and finance, as each IOTA member tax administration could only delegate one PCP, and the participation of the IOTA Secretariat’s members was also limited in the event. All the materials and presentations of the Forum are now available on the event's webpage.