At the European Commission, staff representation is the cornerstone of ensuring fairness and equality in the workplace. Whether you’re a newcomer or a long-serving colleague, understanding how that representation works and why it matters is essential. Generation 2004 is here to ensure that your voice is heard, that your concerns are addressed, and that your workplace evolves to meet your needs.
What is Staff Representation?
Staff representation [1] provides a formal structure for employees to voice their concerns, to negotiate with management, and to influence policies. It’s about ensuring your rights are protected and your working conditions are fair.
Here’s how it works:
Local Staff Committees (LSCs): This is a parliament of trade unions and staff associations, with seats distributed according to election results. These represent staff at specific sites, such as Karlsruhe [2], Brussels [3] or Luxembourg [4] etc. (Ispra and Seville [5] are different sites but for historical reasons they share a ‘local’ staff committee). Here site-specific issues are discussed like recruitment and retention, childcare provision, core-time exceptions and building conditions.
Central Staff Committee (CSC [6]): This is a parliament of LSCs, with seats distributed according to the size of the sites. It represents all eight LSCs at the Commission-wide level and addresses overarching concerns regarding the Commission staff such as promotions, salaries, and pensions or ‘horizontal’ issues affecting a whole category of staff or several sites.
Trade Unions and Staff Associations (OSPs [7]): These are like political parties in national parliaments, but on a much smaller scale. OSPs advocate for specific interests and collaborate with LSCs and the CSC in negotiations with the administration.
So, colleagues are elected to the Karlsruhe local staff committee [8] and might also be part of the team from that local committee which attends the central staff committee. In this way information travels between the different levels of representation.
Staff representation isn’t just about addressing challenges; it’s about creating opportunities for all. Learn more about how it functions here: ABC of Staff Representation [9].
Who is Generation 2004?
Generation 2004 was founded in 2012 to address inequalities introduced by the 2004 reform of the staff regulations, the interinstitutional rules stating the basic rights, duties and obligations of staff together with their fundamental rights of service. The 2004 reform created a divide between pre-2004 and post-2004 colleagues, with the latter facing reduced salaries, limited career progression, and downgraded pensions. The 2014 reform further degraded the attractiveness [10] of the EU institutions as an employer.
Our mission is clear:
Advocate for fairness and equality across all staff categories.
Ensure opportunities for career development, regardless of role or contract type.
Push for transparency in decision-making processes.
We represent all staff, regardless of whether you are an AST-SC, Contract Agent (CAs), temporary agent (TA), AST, AD, or local agent, ensuring everyone’s voice is heard. Discover more about our origins and purpose here: Why Generation 2004? [11].
What Does Generation 2004 Do?
Generation 2004 focuses on tackling systemic inequalities and modernising workplace policies. Here’s what we stand for – just to name few:
Career Development: Advocacy for fair and inclusive internal competitions, expanded and transparent certification to enable function-group jumps, and improved career opportunities for all staff.
Work-Life Balance: Promotion of true flexibility, greater use of teleworking (also from anywhere [12]), decentralised childcare, and family-friendly policies, such as improving paternity leave.
Equal Opportunities: Addressing challenges such as the artificial barriers to internal competitions existing at the Commission but not in the other EU institutions, the lack of true and meaningful reasonable accommodation for colleagues with additional needs, together with topics brought to us by parents such as overcrowded schools and lack of language-specific crèches.
Modern Workplace Solutions: Supporting policies that reflect the realities of today’s workforce including setting rules on the use of open-space Offices and hot-desking, increasing teleworking (including from abroad), ensuring that the flexibility promised in hybrid ways of working is reciprocated and that sustainable mobility policies are not just greenwashing.
Our Generation 2004 leadership team is committed to delivering results for all staff. For details about our structure, see our organisation chart [13].
Why Vote for Generation 2004?
These Local Staff Committee elections are your opportunity to choose who will represent your concerns and advocate for your needs. By voting for Generation 2004, you’re supporting a team that:
Represents everyone: We fight for fairness across all staff categories, which is reflected by the diversity on our electoral list.
Delivers concrete results: From improved teleworking policies to tackling promotion inequalities, our track record speaks for itself (supporting individual cases, formal (article 90) complaints, promotion appeals advice, workplace bullying/harassment support, internal- and external-competition training etc.).
Communicates transparently: We keep you regularly informed about our actions and decisions in a Newsletter.
Adapts to change: We champion innovative policies that reflect the needs of today’s workplace (screen and chairs allowance, teleworking from abroad, include AST-SC to cross-category internal competitions etc.).
You can read more in our manifesto [14]
What About trade unions and staff associations (OSPs)?
OSPs are vital partners in the representation system, working together and alongside the LSCs and CSC to negotiate with the administration. Generation 2004 collaborates where we can to strengthen staff advocacy.
For a detailed comparison of the unions, check out Biggest Unions in the Commission [7].
Why Your Vote Matters
Your vote isn’t just a choice—it’s a statement about the workplace you want. By voting for Generation 2004, you are supporting:
Fair Deal for a Fair Career for All
Uphold Human Care
Technology Evolution for a Europe ‘Fit for the Digital Era’
Upgraded Environments for a Workplace ‘Fit for Humans’
Rights and Transparency for an Equal Future in the Commission
Ethics and Staff Empowerment for a Collaborative Dialogue
How You Can Get Involved
Vote for Generation 2004 in the upcoming LSC elections.
Encourage your colleagues to participate and make their voices heard.
Engage with Generation 2004: Share your feedback and ideas to help us better represent you.
Generation 2004, we are here for you!