When the 5-year legislature of a Commission comes to an end, many Commissioners return to their home country whilst dozens of temporary agents that were once brought to Brussels by these Commissioners grab at any possible straw in order to secure a permanent and ideally high-paying position in Brussels. Of course, if possible, without the unsavoury and demeaning obligation of having to pass an open competition just like any other common and inferior European mortals.
There is certainly nothing wrong with a Commissioner exceptionally bringing in an outsider, a person of special confidence into his or her cabinet, but for the rest, cabinets have important jobs to do that often require detailed knowledge and experience of Commission procedures and policies. Overly relying on outsiders on the basis of special recommendations exposes the Commission to the influence of lobby groups and limits the efficiency of the cabinets right from the first crucial months of a legislature.
Likewise, all the scrambling to secure permanent posts (a.k.a parachutage) is a huge distraction in the final months of a Commission which effectively reduces the institution to a ‘lame duck’ during its terminal phase. Meanwhile, loyal and hard-working staff members in the Directorates-General become justifiably frustrated to see their careers slowed down as management positions become increasingly out of their reach, being reserved for cabinet members. Many colleagues who later have to suffer under managers who sometimes neither have convincing management skills nor have any previous experience at the operational level.
There is certainly a better way to manage human resources in the cabinets: by improving the transparency of the hiring process and promote more internal cabinet appointments. If more colleagues from the relevant DGs are appointed to cabinet positions through a transparent procedure, cabinets would be fully operational at an earlier time. Relations between cabinets and Directorate Generals could be smoother throughout the term and the work more efficient up to the end of the term, as there would be less distraction from the parachuting exercise. There would be less frustration among staff about blocked career paths and in the long term, better qualified managers in the Commission who combine political experience (gained in the cabinets) with real operational experience (gained previously as regular staff member in the Commission).
Last but not least, the Commission could save a lot of money: an in-house expert appointed to a cabinet position can be replaced in his or her former DG by an AD5 laureate from the reserve lists, while outside experts typically need to “be convinced” with very high entrance salaries.
All this would not be so difficult to implement. All it would require is an honest effort from DG HR to make all the available in-house expertise more accessible. All this information is already largely available in in-house-databases such as Sysper and e-CV. Looking for a competition lawyer fluent in Chinese? Or an economist with experience in commodities trading, fluent in Spanish and Portuguese? This can all be found in our internal data bases.
Unfortunately, there seems to be no intention (or honest political will) to make use of all this internal expertise. Instead, a couple of days ago, the Commission launched an external data base for people interested in cabinet positions. There is no means to transfer data entered into e-CV in Sysper to this external data base. All information has to be encoded manually again.
Besides such technical questions, what is lacking is a true effort to mobilise potential in-house candidates: why not invite all the staff to give a presentation in the relevant Directorates General about their experiences in cabinets for instance, and encourage other colleagues to apply and enter their CV into the database?
But most importantly, the best way to encourage internal candidates to express their interest in a cabinet position would be to send out a clear signal that they actually have a chance, even without political connections or recommendations from outside, just on the basis of their professional skills and experience. Publishing a one-liner on Intracomm2 will hardly be enough to mark the beginning of a new era of openness and transparency.
We call upon DG HR to dramatically improve – for 2014 already – the transparency of the cabinet hiring process, convincingly encouraging the best qualified internal candidates to apply. Europe has important questions to tackle. We need to get started right away, making use of the best available in-house experts, rather than continuing frustrating them by smoky and highly dubious practices.
