Related question here asking about the changes for the changes in the regulations for FIDE arbiters (FA and IA) which came into force two years ago.
Previously the rules regarding inactivity for arbiters were that if you didn't officiate in a FIDE registered event for two years or more then you became "inactive" and were no longer eligible to do so until your federation paid a renewal fee.
The new rules stated that you had to do a "refresher course" once every four years (because that is normally how the FIDE laws of chess change) to make sure your knowledge is uptodate. Here is the relevant extract from the FIDE Regulations for Arbiters (effective from 1 July 2021) / B.06.2 – FIDE Regulations for the Training of chess arbiters
4.2 Refresher Courses
Most FIDE regulations change every 4 years. The goal of the refresher course is to keep arbiters up to date with the latest versions of FIDE regulations and tournament practices.
The Refresher Course is a training session for active and inactive FIDE Arbiters or International Arbiters and is used to confirm or regain their active status as an arbiter. It is mandatory to attend a refresher course at least once in a period of four (4) years.
To facilitate accessibility to a wider population of arbiters, such courses shall mainly be organised online or during FIDE official events which gather large numbers of arbiters.
These refresher courses are directly provided by the FIDE Arbiters’ Commission.
Failure to attend a refresher course in a period of four (4) years shall result in changing the arbiter’s activity flag to “inactive”.
As an aside, note that the AICF (All India Chess Federation) has been doing this for several years now, at least since 2019. Those are for Indian arbiters and quite separate from the FIDE ones.
According to the rules from two years ago I become inactive if I haven't done one of these courses before 31st December 2024 and this used to be noted on my FIDE profile in the FIDE Arbiter/Trainer section at the bottom. This note of when my current license expires has gone away.
Furthermore, when I look on the FIDE Arbiters Commission website for refresher courses I get this web page which shows no such courses for May 2023. There are arrows either side of "May 23". When I click on the one to the right, looking for future course, I get no courses. When I click on the arrow to the left, looking for courses in the past, it takes me to "July - September 2020" where it has five courses labelled "ARB Online Refresher Course – Pilot" for the dates 6, 9, 13, 16 of July and 7 September.
In other words, it looks like it was a good idea t the time, they started to implement it, but for now nothing is happening.
Does anybody know what the status of these courses is, whether or not they are going to go ahead or have been scrapped?
