(Please find original version in PL on p 6 of G2004 Newsletter #10 [1])
Dear President Tusk [2],
On behalf of Generation 2004 – an inter-institutional EU staff association – we would like to congratulate you upon taking up your post as President of the European Council.
Generation 2004 was created to defend the interests of staff recruited after the EU staff reform of 01 May 2004 and de facto, almost all staff recruited from the “new” Member States.
As such, Generation 2004 welcomes you as the first person from one of the “new” Member States and a former eastern bloc country to reach such a high level of responsibility in the EU.
In this sense, we are looking forward to working with you on enhancing European integration.
We would like to avail ourselves of this opportunity to remind you that although many citizens of “new” Member States have joined the EU institutions as officials during the past 10 years, relatively few have had the opportunity to reach higher grades, let alone management or expert positions.
This is partly a result of the fact that on 01 May 2004 the staff regulations were revised radically in order to introduce a career structure that made it much more difficult for officials hired at the bottom of the scale to reach grades high enough to apply to management positions.
Due to this reform, officials start their career at lower levels and are not being promoted quicker as it was promised when the reform was introduced.
The average career slowdown is 8 years during a whole career estimated at 35 years. What is even worse, the HR policy which has been implement since the 2004 reform has led to an even bigger split between ‘old’ and ‘new’ officials creating strong feelings of injustice and demotivation.
As an example of the challenges faced by officials recruited after 2004, Generation 2004 would like to point out to you the unfortunate consequences of the recent opening of several hundred senior expert positions in the Commission reserved to AD12/AD3 officials (i.e. reserved to officials having reached senior levels in the career of EU officials).
The same opening of positions reserved to high-ranking officials took place last year in the Council.
Nearly no official from the ranks recruited since 2004 have yet reached such high grades and actually few will ever do so during their careers because of the large number of steps one needs to climb in order to reach this level. As a result, senior expert positions will be filled almost exclusively by officials recruited before the 2004 reform (and enlargement), at a time when recruitment grades were much higher than today!
These senior expert positions will be important because the appointed officials will play strategic roles in advising the senior management of the Commission and the College of Commissioners.
Because the nomination process is already on going we have decided to inform you about the situation.
Don’t you agree that de facto existing blockade for the officials from the new member states deprives the institutions of key expertise and new fresh perspective?
Don’t you think that the lack of geographical balance among these senior experts will be a handicap for the institutions at a time when problems to the East of the EU are reaching again an intensity not seen since 1989?
If you share our view on the existing situation, Generation 2004 would be grateful if you could intervene with President Juncker and explore with him whether solutions could be found to allow skilled and highly educated post-2004 officials to access senior expert positions in the Commission and in other institutions, taking into account their skills, knowledge and experience and not only current career grade.
Yours sincerely, Stefan Grech
Chair, Generation 2004
P.S.
Please find the latest data [1] (p.3) on the number of officials employed within the European Commission according to the grade and their nationality, which needs no further comment.