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The Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol is in effect the agreement’s governing body.
The Meeting of the Parties:
- Receives and considers reports from the Protocol’s Science, Environmental Effects, and Technology and Economics Assessment Panels, set up to consider the latest state of zone sciences and technology so that the parties’ decisions can be properly informed.
- Agrees any amendments and adjustments to the Protocol’s text, including adjustments to the phase-out schedules for ozone-depleting substances, and new components of the Protocol.
- Elects officers and committees, including the Bureau (which steers the meetings), Implementation Committee (to monitor compliance) and Executive Committee of the Multilateral Fund.
- Agrees the budget of the Ozone Secretariat and in general approves its activities.
- Agrees the three-yearly replenishments of the Multilateral Fund.
- Adopts decisions, which put into effect all the functions listed above, implement the Protocol’s compliance system, clarify the meaning of terms in the Protocol’s text, encourage parties to carry out various actions, set up review groups and commission reports, agree venues for future meetings, and so on.
The Meeting of the Parties takes place annually, and is open to any party that has ratified the Protocol; in practice, the majority of them attend regularly (developing countries’ delegations are given financial assistance to attend). The Protocol’s Open-Ended Working Group (which is just like the meeting of the parties, but is normally shorter, and does not take decisions, it simply refers issues on to the meeting) meets about three or four months before the meeting to hold preliminary discussions on the agenda and the major items for debate, to help ensure that the main meeting runs smoothly.
From the point of view of the Multilateral Fund, the meeting of the parties is a highly important body. Originally, of course, it agreed to establish the Fund and set the basic outline of the way in which it works. Now it chooses the members of the Executive Committee, and receives regular reports from it, agrees the Fund replenishments, and the contributions requested from each party. Before each replenishment it now normally commissions and discusses a review of likely needs for funding, and it has also conducted reviews of other issues, such as the fixed exchange-rate system for contributions.
The Ozone Secretariat is the Secretariat for the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer and for the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.