No-Confidence Motion: Management Receives a Serious Warning

The results of the first-ever global no-confidence motion against AFP’s management have been announced. More than half of those who voted did not express their confidence in management: 46% expressed their confidence, 40% their lack of confidence, and a significant number of employees (191, or 14% of the votes) did not choose between the two options.

While the no-confidence motion did not win a majority of votes, it would be a mistake to perceive this vote as pointless, or even as destabilizing for AFP, as some suggested before it began. This vote simply revealed the lack of consensus surrounding management’s plans. Such consensus is ideally built through dialogue and negotiation. The unions and management are scheduled to resume talks today, April 13. How events unfold from here will determine whether the motion of no confidence has succeeded in shifting the debate and whether the Agency will emerge victorious from this vote.

SUD also considers this vote valuable as it is the first time that all staff, regardless of the type of their contract, have been consulted on the company’s future.

SUD not only fought hard to initiate this motion of no confidence in the face of management’s intransigence and unresponsiveness on numerous issues. We also fiercely defended, from the outset, the principle that all employees across the network should be able to vote – the work of every region of the world goes into realizing the Agency’s mission.

The vote also revealed the pressing need for local-contract staff to be heard and to be able to discuss their specific situations. During the general assemblies, employees expressed their deep frustration with what they consider injustices in the current structure of AFP, with its multiple employment statuses, and they emphasized the lack of representation to defend their interests.

SUD believes that the outcome of the no-confidence motion constitutes a serious warning to management. If management does not engage in genuine dialogue, if it does not develop a plan that addresses the inequalities and injustices within the Agency, the divisions that weaken us will never heal.

Paris, April 13, 2026
SUD-AFP (Solidarity-Unity-Democracy)