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The Commission still does not believe in the intelligence of its staff!

Internal competitions should be conceived as a challenge and an opportunity, rather than as a source of problems. Obviously, it should be a tool to motivate staff at all levels and to retain the most talented and motivated employees from different categories. Internal competitions should provide an opportunity for staff to apply their skills and knowledge to areas beyond of their current jobs, should give the feeling that the institution is concerned about staff growth and at the same time provide avenues to reach individual career goals.

However, like any weapon, internal competitions need to be handled with care!

This time, again, the recently announced Internal Competitions show how the public institution treats and consequently demotivates talented and qualified staff. It seems that big EU slogans like Talent management and Career development are just empty words without any meaning.

Generation2004‘s critical view on the subject has been known from the beginning… after receiving many requests from colleagues in different categories, we made an analysis of the discrimination in the table below:

One obvious point evidenced in the table above is that, no matter how high their high education level and experience are, contract staff have very limited access to these Internal Competitions, the discrimination is further reinforced by the differences in the selection method. All candidates for higher AD grades (7, 8, 10 and 12) and for AST4, will be selected on the basis of a Talent Screener. However, candidates for the lower grades AST-SC, AST2 and AD6 will be invited to sit a series of meaningless but anonymous EPSO computer-based multiple-choice question (MCQ) tests. The explanation is that Cabinet Members are probably worried that they would fail the CBT test, whence the non-anonymous talent screeners for the competitions that are of interest to them.

The eligibility criteria and selection conditions in these Internal Competitions announce a big masquerade to guarantee permanent AD positions to Temporary Agents from the Cabinets. Moreover, these competitions have turned out to be no more than an enormous charade!