*Update 09.01.2025 Please be aware of the end of contract admin and that the payment of the EU unemployment allowance (the extra, supplementary part) is not automatic: it must be requested and the deadline is very short: ‘within eight days after your contract ends, submit a formal application for EU unemployment allowance’ (p.7, Practical Guide, August 2023).*

*Update 17.10.2024 We are pleased to see that staff matters now makes the equating of resignation and refusal of an offer of renewal clearer.*

Original article: So, the Commission is not what you expected and you’d like to leave at the end of your contract: you’re not looking for a renewal/extension. You don’t want to hang around to see whether you get the opportunity of working 6 years (plus a potential ‘unicorn’ year)[1] before having to leave the Commission, taking all of your knowledge and experience with you. If this is you, please discuss your situation with your line manager.

Why? Because once you are formally offered a further contract, if you refuse you will lose your entitlement to EU unemployment allowance. See court judgements T325/00 (German only) and T‑271/18: these judgements are not new, but we are concerned that the information available to colleagues is not clear enough[2].

The result of this opacity is that non-permanent staff, colleagues who are already employed under less favourable conditions[3], are further missing out by having to take decisions in the dark,  without knowing the full repercussions of those choices.

But I didn’t resign!

Refusing the offer of a contract renewal/extension is processed as though it were the equivalent to resigning. It is encoded in the system as ‘refusal of the extension by the agent’. Even a request to review the extension/renewal documents/contract means that the formal extension request must exist: if you refuse you are effectively resigning.

‘… the fact remains that the purpose … is clear in that [unemployment benefit] is to provide financial assistance to a staff member who becomes unemployed when his service is terminated not by his choice or because of his misconduct, with the result that refusal of an extension of a fixed-term contract is considered to be a resignation, following which that staff member is not entitled to unemployment benefits (paragraph 52, T‑271/18)[bold is not present in the original]

While it is always possible to formally request the reversal of a decision, even a resignation/refusal, there are no guarantees of success, as was unfortunately the case for the former colleague in T‑271/18.

Please take advantage of the EU Learn information sessions well in advance: there are certain steps that must be taken before you leave. You can also ask questions there:

• removal, resettlement allowance, travel expenses,
• EU Unemployment allowance rights,
• pension rights, transfer IN/OUT of pension rights.

What else can you do?

Check vacancies elsewhere: e.g. in the other institutions or the EPSO website.

Look at the provision of national unemployment benefits, both where you are located and where you might want to be: you may still be eligible for those benefits, depending on the location and your circumstances. The EU unemployment allowance is complementary to the national allowance i.e. national unemployment allowance is deducted from it.

Generation 2004 encourages you to know what you are entitled to and make full use of the available options: don’t miss out on your rights!

As always, we would love to hear from you. Please do not hesitate to get in touch with us or leave a comment below.

If you appreciate our work, please consider becoming a member of Generation 2004.

[1] Note that there are no guarantees that contract agent (CA) and temporary agent (TA) colleague will be offered the full 6 (or 7) years and there is no written right for them to have the full 6 (or 7) years. New recruits will not know whether this is to be their future since it is unusual to be offered a 1 x 6-year contract. Some are not even offered a 1 x 3-year contract.  They may have the ‘will they, won’t they?’ worry every single year with several 1-year contacts. This means that CA and TA colleagues must remain in ‘interview mode’ and giving their very, very best at all times. Consider not just the strain of this and the impact on mental health, but also the financial hit of perhaps not getting the accommodation deposit back due to insufficient notice (how much notice does the Commission give on whether the contract will be renewed?).

The 7th ‘unicorn’ year: colleagues may have to redo the 9-month probation period. Yes, after 6 years of employment they might have to repeat this step.  So 9 of their last 12 months in a 7-year career will be spent (again) on probation. Consider how this impacts requests for annual leave or the ability to push back when  workload exceeds what is humanly possible.

[2] See the Picard case for a famous example of this lack of transparency: a new contract resulted in

• pension accrual rate changing from 1.9% to 1.8% for the same contribution,
• pensionable age increasing from 63 years to 66.

[3] For example (this list is not exhaustive, feel free to send us additions):

On leaving:

• permission is required before moving to another role post-Commission e.g.  ‘currently, CA3bs are supposed to ask for permission 1 month before accepting a new job; the Commission has 1 month to respond, which is a non-sense as no employer will accept in the current job market to wait for 2 months before knowing if a prospective employee stays on the job or not’ (Report on the social dialogue at the Commission). Unfortunately, the same scrutiny is not always applied to those higher up: see Central Staff Committee note  Application of Article 16 to two senior Commission officials, former Deputy Directors General of Competition + Annex (08/06/2021(2021)3754633),
• CA and TA colleagues who leave the Commission before 5 years have passed, counting from the date of the reimbursement of the 2020 teleworking screen and chair, are expected to pay some part of the amount back!
• with less than 10 years in the institutions and not knowing whether and when they might return, colleagues will have to transfer their pension entitlements (perhaps more than once),
• the pension date at the Commission may or may not correspond with the national pension age of the place of employment (e.g. Luxembourg), causing difficulties if the colleague is found to have worked beyond the national age.

During your time at the Commission:

• ‘[CA] GFIV contract staff meeting the same minimum recruitment requirements (education and experience) as junior administrators [AD5-6] may earn 28 % less than the latter. Currently around 6 % of staff, all of them GFI and GFII contract staff, earn less than the lowest paid official (AST/SC1 [secretaries and clerks], with a basic yearly salary around €32 400). Another third of staff (across all categories) earn up to twice that amount.’ (Paragraph 61, ECA Special report no 15/2019)
• internal competitions may or may not happen while colleagues are employed at the Commission and if they do, they are artificially restricted with regards to the options available at other EU institutions (need to be already in a specific function group) and also with regards to the second language (a restriction EPSO can no longer apply),
• there are very scarce opportunities for promotion (‘reclassification’), to say nothing of 3b CAs who can have an evaluation but who can receive no corresponding reward.

[*] There is a joint committee on reclassification (not promotion) for Temporary Agents (TAs) of JRC/GROW/RTD only. We also see TAs with permanent contracts (yes, mental gymnastics are necessary here: to be permanently temporary) 2a and 2d listed for reclassification.

[**] 16.01.2023 HR response to our questions on TAs: Conditions of Employment of Other Servants (CEOS) (Article 15(2)) which states that only the provisions on annual reports [appraisal] from the Staff Regulations (SR) (Article 43) apply by analogy to TAs. By contrast, there is no such provision concerning  promotion (SR Article 45). This means that, in principle, TAs are not subject to promotion. This principle is confirmed in the case-law of the General Court (e.g. T-366/15 P, paragraph 48).