Don't miss out on the RCN's Extraordinary General Meeting

Published: 17 April 2013

With a matter of days to go until the Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) on the RCN’s membership of the International Council of Nurses (ICN), the RCN is reminding members to take part in this important decision.

The EGM, on Tuesday 23 April from 4.30pm, will be held in the Main Hall, Arena and Conference Centre, Liverpool, and will see members debate whether to allow RCN Council to withdraw the organisation from membership of the ICN.

Since 2007, the RCN has been in discussion with the International Council of Nurses (ICN), a federation of 130 membership organisations, about the level of fees that we pay. Along with other member associations, we have also been pressing for the ICN to become more fit for purpose to meet the global health challenges facing nursing now and in the future.

Given the lack of progress, in November 2010, the RCN wrote to the ICN to advise them that we would incrementally be reducing our ICN fees. We said that we believed that this would allow time for discussions and a reduction in fees to a more acceptable level. For the period 2010-12 the RCN has paid the ICN £926,000. In total, since 2007, the RCN has paid approximately £2.3 million. Discussions with the ICN have continued over that time and RCN staff have spent considerable time in meetings, teleconferences and preparing papers in an attempt to find an amicable solution. Unfortunately, we have not been able to achieve a long-term model of payments.

Professor Kath McCourt, Chair of RCN Council said in March: “Fees for membership of the ICN have been rising because of exchange rate fluctuations and because the ICN calculates fees on the number of nurse members in the representative organisation of each country. This means the RCN’s fees represent 16 per cent of the overall ICN subscription income, which equates to more than half a million pounds annually. We believe this is unsustainable.”

Because the RCN has not paid its 2012 fees in full, ICN recently informed us that the RCN’s membership of ICN has now been suspended. 

A question and answer page has been updated to reflect the latest news on the EGM.