European Union staff has the right to 3 types of family allowances: household allowance, dependent child allowance, school allowance. The statutory provisions (articles 67 § 2 and article 68 § 2 of the staff regulations) foresee rules against the overlapping of all family allowances granted by the European Union and received from other sources.
Continue reading Automatic declarations of Belgian Third-party allowances announced by PMO
* Update 04.02.2025, Training closed. * Generation 2004, in collaboration with Yasemos Europeos, is happy to offer you online training for EPSO competitions with a special discount rate for our members. The offer includes modules on Self-study Multiple Choice Questionnaires (MCQ) and reasoning Computer Based Tests (CBT). All training modules will be in English.
New technologies do not always bring benefits for everybody. One of the collateral victims of more digitalisation are interpreters. The job of an Interpreter was already difficult in the “old” days of meetings in situ, with interpreters working from booths in the conference room where delegates negotiated EU policies.
*update 28.06.2024, the Recording and presentation are available (NB: in *.Zip format). Brussels, the heart of Europe, is a vibrant city but like many cities (big and small), it faces challenges related to urban violence. Recently, incidents of violence in Brussels have become a growing concern affecting the safety and well-being of our staff and our citizens
For those of you who remain in the office keeping the Commission standing (thanks!), please check out the heatwave instructions for dealing with hot Offices and the list of buildings to be temporarily closed under Buildings Energy Saving Together (BEST) 2024[1]. Read our related article on how these closures undermine that working from home is voluntary.*
Did you know that Brussels is the most international city in the democratic world? There is as much as 315,000 eligible international voters, 77% of them being EU citizens. They are one third of all potential voters across the 19 Brussels communes. In some communes such as Ixelles, Saint Gilles or Etterbeek, non-Belgians make up almost half of the population.
***Update 15.10.2025 DG HR position on the application of the anti-cumulation (‘7-year’) rule***
Original article: We would like to inform you that following your numerous and regular questions concerning the 7-year rule (originally 6-year rule)[1] which applies to Contract Agents (CA) 3B, we submitted an official note to the administration requesting clarification on its application and ultimately the extension of the 7-year rule by 3 additional years. The rationale behind this request is clear, but we know that 10 years is generally avoided since this is the threshold for entitlement to an EU pension.
Continue reading Empowering contract agents: Generation 2004 calls for amendments to 7- year rule
*Update 08.07.2024. We will not claim that PMO reacted to our note of May and implemented the new system within this one month. But we do believe that we gave a bit of a push. Lately, the European Union’s Paymaster’s Office (PMO) has been under scrutiny due to prolonged delays in processing school fee reimbursements and third-party allowances.
Continue reading Streamlining the Family Allowance Process: A Welcome Change for EU Staff in Belgium
Why have we decided to write this article? We all know mobility in the Commission is exemplary (look at the precise targeting of some internal competitions). We also know all job interviews in the Commission endeavour to follow the highest standards of transparency with the sole objective to find the best candidate for the job. Talent and Career Development! People First! Continue reading How to identify a fake interview: the workshop you will never find in “Career Days”
*Update 28.06.2024: many thanks to the colleagues who got in touch to say that bank account changes are happening quickly and to suggest accounts with the association cooperative financière des fonctionnaires (AMFIE) as an option.*
Original article: If you have a Luxembourg ING bank account please act quickly to ensure that you receive your August salary. We calculate that you must not only have a new account in place but also have it approved within the FiLIP application by Thursday 20.06.2024 to avoid problems. We’ve sent a note to PMO to ask what workarounds they have in place and whether they’re ready for this additional (and sudden) increase in workload. Continue reading ING Lux client? Act now!
