As you probably already know, this year’s promotion (officials)/reclassification (Contract Agents) exercises just ended with the publication of the lists on 12 November.
If your name is on a list and you were promoted/reclassified then Generation 2004 would like to warmly congratulate you. We are sure it was well deserved!
Eurostat has published its 2020 report on the yearly salary update. While in the recent past this update was essentially a percentage number, this year the exception clause introduced in the 2014 staff regulations, will be triggered for the first time.
The relevant provisions regarding the exception clause are in Annex XI, Chapter 5, ‘moderation and exception clauses’ of the Staff Regulations. The provisions do not make for easy reading for non-lawyers, but essentially the exception clause consists of two ingredients:
Continue reading 2020 The yearly salary update: time for the exception clause
Welcome to the Generation 2004 Newsletter of 23 October 2020.
In this issue we open with the hot topic of the season: Teleworking from outside of your place of employment! A topic as hot as the number of different opinions about it, a situation that led us to launch a survey to get a real pulse of the situation.
We also cover a topic that, with the ever increasing number of fixed-term contact staff, becomes more and more relevant, the transfer out of pensions from the Commission system to other systems.
We also bring you the latest news from the Brussels Local Staff Committee mismanagement practises on how experience stopped counting and contract staff should not expect much from the current leadership of this body.
On more positive news, we report on how the PMO listened to our request and increased the size of its team handling Belgium family allowances, which have see their values change earlier this year and have consequently increased the number of update requests in this area.
The training on burnout prevention, which we announced in our previous newsletter, is about to start. Its two exploratory sessions were attended by more than 70 colleagues. The first real training session will start on Wednesday 28 October and you can still join! The course is free of charge but donations to NGO Maïa are encouraged.
Finally we bring you the situation around the new European School of Brussels and how a grassroots movement that Generation 2004 proudly supported, managed to sway a vote that would have otherwise very negatively impacted many pupils and their families.
The European Schools of Brussels have been under great stress for a long period of 10 years due to overcrowding.
The inaction of the Belgium state to comply with its legal obligations to provide a new school, coupled with the lack of real pressure from the European Commission for it to do so, led to an extreme situation that needs very urgent attention. Continue reading The new European School of Brussels
You have shown that teleworking is possible, but do you want more of it and are you being consulted? [1]
Article 20 of the staff regulations stipulates that ‘An official shall reside either in the place where he is employed or at no greater distance therefrom as is compatible with the proper performance of his duties. The official shall notify the Appointing Authority of his address and inform it immediately of any change of address.’
Therefore, the outcome of any future teleworking decisions might affect us all. These choices could impact everything from the multiannual financial framework (MFF) to the European Green Deal, to all 6 pillars of the new HR strategy to the money you take home every month: the 16 % expatriation allowance / 4% foreign residence allowance and potentially the coefficient (if any) that applies to your salary. Continue reading Do you want to be able to telework from outside your place of employment?
*Update 06.11.2025 here is the link to the retirement info available on staff matters.* Original article: If you are on a time-limited contract and reaching the end of your time in the institutions or if you decide to leave even if in a permanent type of statutory link, you should spend some time reflecting about your acquired pension rights. In principle, there are three scenarios to consider. Continue reading Transfer-out of pension rights when leaving the institutions
Here is a good example for a Catch-22 situation: Staff on fixed-term contracts excluded from potential roles due to their fixed-term contracts.
Generation 2004 again challenges the unequal treatment of staff, this time coming from what would ideally be the most unlikely of sources, the Local Staff Committee (LSC) in Brussels, which refused to interview those candidates who had ‘only a year left’ before hitting the arbitrary 7-year rule for their recent vacant post since it would be a ‘waste of time’. It is most unfortunate that an LSC would choose not to lead by example, choose not to seize this opportunity to take action and fulfil their declared responsibility to ‘represent the interests of the staff ’. But what can we expect from from Union for Unity (U4U) and Alliance, a coalition representing the interests of the already-relatively-well-looked-after? [1]
Belgian-based parents: update your family-allowance information!
Generation 2004 has received confirmation from the PMO that they are increasing the resources allocated to the family-allowances calculating team as we requested and we’re promised that this should be visible to those still awaiting a response within weeks: let us know whether this is indeed your experience! Continue reading A perfect storm of change: more staff made available to process PMO file updates for Belgian family allowance
Welcome to the Generation 2004 Newsletter of 7 October 2020.
In this issue we are first and foremost covering the current DG HR reinvention exercise: the ‘New’ HR Strategy. We look at it with a critical eye and frame it in the context of the other large and ongoing internal project of our institution: the Greening of the Commission, and how the latter has the potential to affect the earlier, and, we believe, unfortunately not for the better.
On Covid-19 related news, we report on the freezing of the return to office, which Generation 2004 had advocated for and was being disregarded about. The unfortunately infamous expression we told you so springs to mind. In other health related matters we raise awareness for potential surprises you should avoid when choosing a psychotherapist, and we will soon launch a training on burnout prevention, which will be delivered to you via WebEx by a colleague working in the Commission. The training will be free of charge but donations to a NGO are encouraged.
In two articles related to the education of your children, we remind you of the deadline to apply for repayment of exceptional education costs and we also cover what effectively can be accounted for, towards a full-time attendance at an educational establishment.
Finally we would like to correct a mistake in the previous newsletter where the article on the European Mobility Week 2020 was wrongly listed.
That’s all for now, we hope you will enjoy the reading and, as usual, we invite you to let us know what you think or if we can help you in any way.
Contrary to what we might expect during the COVID-19 health crisis, DG HR is moving forward with its “new HR strategy” regardless. Although for Generation 2004 it is unclear what the concrete improvements of the previous HR reform launched by Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva were: the most visible outcome was the creation of centralised AMCs. According to DG HR, the past staff surveys should provide quite a good understanding of that HR reform: now that is an innovative way to do an assessment of a policy, one could say. Continue reading New HR Strategy – Modernisation or opportunism? The European Green Deal and the multi-annual financial framework (MFF)
