First we would like to congratulate once again those of you who received their well-deserved promotion during the 2018 promotion exercise. If you were one of the promoted colleagues, then it means you were lucky not to be penalised by a leaving Head of unit, by a restructuring of your DG or by many other factors which have nothing to do with merit and performance but that often negatively influence the outcome of the promotion exercise.
Yet, even not considering those unexpected factors, year after year most of us feel the uncertainty and injustice of the Commission’s very opaque and arbitrary promotion system and, unsurprisingly, many of you have contacted us for support on their intended Article 90 complaint concerning non-promotion. To that end, we have created an Article 90 template for you to use (deadline to submit is 10 February 2019).
However, we must remain realistic; based on our experience from the last several years, chances that your complaint will lead to a positive outcome range from very slim to none. DG HR is very consistent in defending its rotten promotion system and practices: it keeps repeating that our promotion system is fully compliant with all legal requirements, and when anyone raises their voice against it immediately lawyers-up and invites the person to file a lawsuit at the Court of Justice. Therefore, we feel that more than ever, art. 90 administrative complaint procedures have become a mere formality whose only purpose is to follow-up with possible court cases.
But we are not giving up and we keep looking for alternative ways to achieve our goals. A few years ago, Generation 2004 managed to pass through the Central staff committee (the official statutory body for staff representation) two notes exposing the weaknesses of the system. In addition, our representatives in the Joint Promotion Committees submitted a well-justified minority position exposing the problems of the current system, which DG HR was forced to put on display in Sysper for all colleagues seeking an appeal for non-promotion proposal to see. Even if in practical terms, it means very little, it is there to expose injustice and administrative discretion by any means possible to us.
If you are an AST that appealed, you have surely seen this text show up in your appeal file under a section called Minority position:
- There is no evidence that an Institution-wide comparison of merit took place at Joint Preparatory Group and Joint Promotion Committee level.
- An ex-ante allocation of promotion possibilities among DGs is incompatible with an Institution-wide comparison of merits.
- The variable quality of reports does not allow for transparent and reproducible comparisons of merit.
For AD colleagues, besides all of the above there is a fourth point:
- The exclusion of colleagues with ongoing IDOC inquiries or procedure from promotions violates the presumption of innocence and constitutes a punishment without proven guilt.
It is therefore important to understand that our members did not vote against anyone’s promotion. Our vote is a vote against the structural weaknesses of the promotion exercise and a way to have our voice heard in yet another venue!
