On 6 November 2025 the Commission adopted a decision [1] aimed at enhancing the geographical diversity among its staff. Stephen QUEST, Director-General of DG HR, hailed it as an introduction of measures designed to attract individuals from underrepresented countries to join the Commission.
Here are the details of what DG HR has come up with:
- Let’s start with reasons for the imbalances. DG HR’s diagnose probably diverges from your gut feeling. According to DG HR, the reasons for existing imbalances are not non-competitive working conditions (eg: salary, accommodation costs, working opportunities for spouses and childcare). No! It is lack of information among candidates, how interesting the work in the Commission is. Thus, the problem will be solved, by better communication on MS side, with special Joint Action Plans signed with the underrepresented countries and focussed on training and communication. Is this going to work?
- DG HR claims that there are 15 nationalities that are underrepresented in the grades AD5-8: Austria, Czechia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, and Sweden.
The calculation is done like this: For each MS, DG HR uses a reference rate consisting in 80% of MEP number and 20% of population and compared it to the number of staff originating from that MS, thus giving smaller countries substantially more weight in this calculation than bigger ones.
Next, why only AD5-AD8? These are the current AD entry grades and the recruits in this group will develop their carriers in the Commission, impacting geographical balance on the long term. This is also what MS asked for. Other staff groups shall be monitored for geographical balance as well, but under the current decision, nothing has to be done right now, even though almost 70% of AST-SC officials come from only 5 Member States and 0.5% come from 11 Member states HR Key Figures – Key Figures on European Commission Staff on 1st January 2025 | Sheet – Qlik Sense [2].
Is this a meaningful approach? - For what the Commission will be doing, let’s make a step back in time. You have noticed that the Commission has introduced a so-called New Recruitment Model [3] earlier this year. The idea behind it, was to create larger reserve lists, and speed up the interinstitutional EPSO selection process by shifting the oral part of the competition into to the recruitment stage at the DG level [4]. Incidentally, staff representation was excluded from DG recruitment interviews. Intention or accident?
At the social dialogue, DG HR waved a court judgment saying that candidates at reserves lists have more or less the same merits so, according to the DG HR, a secondary criterium like nationality could be used. The fact that the ruling referred to the previous competition model and that in the new model the oral assessment has been shifted to the recruitment phase, did not bother DG HR’s enthusiasm to make the Commission geographically balanced.
Now, having the larger reserve lists will allow DGs in theory to invite candidates from the underrepresented countries, and if a DG will be hesitant, DG HR will be there to straighten them up! In this way, at least one underrepresented national will have to be invited for an interview.
Last, but not least, dear AD5-AD8 internal competition [5] laureates, you will also enjoy measures proposed by DG HR to achieve geographical balance. Your mental balance might not be guaranteed though.
Will this whole system work?
One can seriously doubt if such forced positive discrimination will work. One should remember that merit remains the main statutory criterium for recruitment. Still, DGs know the tricks to be able to select candidates they prefer. Poor Finish, Danish and Czech candidates who are invited to interviews for posts that do not fit their profiles, hoping for a real chance, but getting tired after the umpteenth rejection.
Generation 2004 was consulted within a structured dialogue with trade unions and staff associations (OSPs) and clearly expressed its skepticism regarding the proposed approach for the reasons below:
- A deeper analysis of the impact of working conditions (e.g. salaries, working time, cost of living, employment opportunities for spouses, childcare and school education) on the attractiveness of the Commission as an employer would be important to further improve geographical balance. This should include systematic comparison between the Member States (MS), identifying the main deterrents for under-represented nationalities and quantifying their effect on recruitment and retention.
- There is the risk of limited impact of proposed communication campaigns carried out in MS when potential candidates compare the claims with the concrete working conditions which are publicly available. Absence of any independent data is a major cause for disregarding the real causes of geographical imbalance and for the failure to mitigate them so far. At the same time, it leads to a difficulty to monitor progress or adaptation measures effectively.
- A politically driven approach with envisaged “compensating” actions limited only to AD5-AD8 cohort ignores remaining staff groups. This risk is perpetuating imbalances among ASTs, Contract Agents, and other grades, where representation gaps are often even wider.
- With a transfer of elements of a selection process into DG interviews in “the new recruitment model”, merits of the candidates cannot be considered as “substantially” the same, as some of them will only be tested during interviews.
- The lack of transparent reporting on how nationality is factored into recruitment decisions may undermine trust among staff and candidates.
- Lack of long-term retention strategies for underrepresented nationalities, such as career development support, mobility opportunities, and targeted mentoring.
We find that this politically driven exercise has little chances to succeed, and that the Commission and Member States will pass the buck among themselves who is guilty of not reaching the balance. The spectacle will also be enriched by court cases of the unsuccessful candidates who would have been informed that they did not succeed because of their nationality…
So, get your popcorn and watch!
Ps. In the meantime, in 2024 the European Parliament decided to hold its own competitions for Dutch, Luxembourgish and Austrian ADs European Parliament – Vacancy search [6] which add to legal chaos (as the Commission Legal Service claims that national competitions are not legally possible, hence the alternative Commission approach) and can become a source of interesting case law.