The recent announcement that the internal Administrator (AD5) competition is tailored to temporary agents is, for the vast majority of EU staff, the straw that broke the camel’s back. Many Contract Agents (CAs) – the most neglected staff category, Assistants (AST) and Secretarial and Clerk Assistants (AST/SC) fulfil the criteria for the competition; excluding them from this career advancement opportunity is a major loss for the European Commission and a major source of frustration for these categories of staff.
The European Commission, which preaches the principles of non-discrimination, transparency and equality of chances to EU Member States public administrations and society at large, is at the same time condoning the opposite inside its own premises. It is hard to explain how to match the precarious situation of CAs in the EU institution, with the powerful speech of President von der Leyen, where she highlighted that in our Union there is no place for any form of discrimination and that in the European Union, discrimination is prohibited at the highest possible legal level.
The European Commission remains today an organisation where more than 20% of the all staff members have precarious working conditions. Rights of CA colleagues have been too often ignored and the way contract agents have been treated for the past 16 years goes against EU values. Consequently, there are many significant indications that we should not rely on the EU Commission to assure equal treatment of its staff and it is now time for us to act all together!
[1]Mobilize and sign the petition [1] [1] in support of Contract Agents! This initiative is urgent, especially when we consider the exceptional times we are experiencing and when staff have once again proven their value and commitment.
[2]In parallel to the petition we have also sent a note to Ms. Ingestad [2], the Director General of DG HR, to expose the unfair way in which CAs and also ASTs are treated when it comes to aspects like the annual staff regulations 5% limit to hire CAs through ICs and the use of this quota, which we believe is hardly ever reached, and the lack of eligibility for ASTs to apply for Internal Competitions.
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[1] This petition closed 27.11.2020 with 1 415 signatures and as of June 2021 is with the European Parliament. [3] We will keep you posted on its progress!
toolTips('.classtoolTips19','Staff Regulations of Officials and the Conditions of Employment of Other Servants of the European Union (\'Staff Regulations [4] (SR)\') are rules stating:
• fundamental conditions of service
• basic rights, duties and obligations of staff.
The SR have been reformed x 2 (so far):
• 2004 (Kinnock White paper)
• 2014 (Regulation 1023/2013 [5])
For a summary of stated intentions and real outcomes of those two reforms check out: European Court of Auditors, 2019, Special report no 15/2019 [6]: Implementation of the 2014 staff reform package at the Commission – Big savings but not without consequences for staff
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Contract Agents (CAs) were created by the 2004 Staff Regulations Reform. There are two types of CA: those with unlimited contracts, 3A [7] (‘indefinite’) and those with time-limited contracts [8], 3B [9]. CAs can belong to 4 different function groups (\'GF\') with different responsibilities and salaries [10].
As the use of contract staff becomes increasingly common, there has been a corresponding increase in the diversity of status and pay of the Commission’s workforce. For example, GFIV contract staff meeting the same minimum recruitment requirements (education and experience) as junior administrators may earn 28 % less. (European Court of Auditors, 2019, Special report no 15/2019 [6]: Implementation of the 2014 staff reform package at the Commission – Big savings but not without consequences for staff, point 61, page 34)
We have a working group dedicated to the dossier, and in December 2012 we addressed the first of many letters (\'notes\') about Contract Agents to Human Resources of all Institutions and agencies [11] (here is the cover e-mail [12]).
As a background you can see the report of the Commission to the Council regarding the recruitment of the contract agents in 2010 [13] (in French, COM(2011)802 final 23.11.2011).
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