The staff of the Executive agencies [1] of the European Commission (currently CINEA, EACEA, HADEA, Eismea, ERCEA and REA) have seen their working conditions deteriorate over the years.[1] Colleagues in the agencies are facing staff reductions while the budgets that they manage increase regularly. All this in a context of precariousness and limited career and mobility possibilities [2]!
Generation 2004 has constantly denounced this situation Please sign our European Parliament contract agent (CA) petition [3]! We have taken specific action in full coordination with the local staff committees of the agencies, as well as with the other trade unions and staff associations (OSPs) representing staff (the Common Front [4]).
The last action was a mobilization gathering hundreds of colleagues in Brussels at the Berlaymont on Tuesday 6 June, where we could witness the participation of the Deputy Director General of Human Resources and the Director of the OIB, probably to support our cause. This action was preceded by others at Covent Garden on 13 December and 31 January.
This is the consequence of a Commission that preaches social dialogue [5], equal pay for equal work and stable jobs to employers in all Member States; but which disregards those very same principles for its own staff: in 2022 CAs were 25% of Commission staff [6] and growing.
‘As the use of contract staff becomes increasingly common, there has been a corresponding increase in the diversity of status and pay of the Commission’s workforce. For example, 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 [7])
The Commission is going as far as tacitly accepting the insults of the Secretary of State for Urban Planning and European Relations of the Brussels Capital Region, Pascal Smet [8]. Mr Smet made insulting remarks [9](also here [10]) about all the staff of the European institutions on 23 January during a meeting concerning the forced move of agencies staff to the North Light building. (see response from European Council President Charles Michel [11] and the Common Front note to Commissioner Hahn [12]). It seems that supporting the real-estate policies of Brussels politicians is more important than supporting EU staff.
Generation 2004, together with other representative organizations and trade unions, handed Commissioner Hahn a file containing our demands during the mobilisation. This symbolic gesture is another call for effective dialogue. We believe that the following is needed:
- A serious reform of the governance of the social dialogue of the agencies. The forced move to the North Light building has exposed who is at the wheel in practice. The decision has been taken at Commissioner level and executed by the OIB in total opacity as fait accompli, without any real consultation with staff and without even proper involvement of the managers in charge of the agencies.
- Save agency jobs. One third of Eismea jobs are to disappear by 2027. It is worth remembering that Eismea faces increased workload to cope with a large budget including the flagship program ‘European Innovation Council’ endowed with 10 billion EUR. Generation 2004 requests a proper CA labour market for CAs in general and the colleagues in the agencies in particular, facilitating inter-agency mobility but also mobility between agencies and the supervisory DGs.
- Career prospects for the colleagues in the agencies. Reclassification[2] rates are very low and contract and temporary staff in the agencies do not have access to internal Commission competitions. Our colleagues in the agencies deserve better prospects of career development.
We won’t leave our colleagues in the agencies to do this alone!
We will keep you posted on any developments and as always, we appreciate your feedback [13].
If you appreciate our work, please consider becoming a member of Generation 2004 [14].
[1] Consider the decision to centralise all agencies in Brussels in 2021, ostensibly since they need to be physically close to one another (after more than a year of pandemic-enforced telework). This resulted in the:
- termination of the Luxembourg-based Consumers, Health, Agriculture and Food Executive Agency (Chafea) 03.2021 [15], after 15 years,
- loss of a great deal of expertise [16] since many staff (Contract Agents) chose not to follow their role to Brussels and so their contracts ended,
- redistribution of Chafea tasks to 2 different agencies.
In 2022 it was decided to move 3 of the 6 agencies to a different neighbourhood of Brussels [17]. So physical proximity is less important than it was in 2021?
[2]
| Staff | Appraisal | Reward possible? | Minimum time in grade (‘seniority’) to be eligible | Average speed of reward |
| Contract Agents [18] 3a | Yes | reclassification [19] | 2 years | Page 3 of Ares(2021)2467829 – 12/04/2021 CSC note on CA 3a [20] |
| Contract Agents 3b [21] | Yes | no | ≤ 3 years |
N/A |