What at first glance looks like a logical continuation and supplement to the new EPSO competition model is above all one thing: the admission of failure across the board. No matter how rosy the Director General of HR portrays the situation and the new recruitment model, EPSO is not living up to its claim to deliver a better and ultimately faster service and DG HR is now struggling to ensure at least a minimum level of quality in the new recruitment model. 

We remember: in order to shorten the allegedly too-long selection procedures, but without any careful assessment of the actual reasons for the time it was taking, EPSO abolished the assessment centre without further ado and replaced it with a multiple choice test on EU knowledge or in the specialist field of the competition plus a written test.  

The problem with this, of course, is that many of the candidates’ general competences that are recognised by EPSO as essential can simply no longer be tested. Spoiler: The examination of such skills was exactly the aim of the now abolished assessment centre. 

Epsolution ingenuity 

But EPSO had an ingenious idea: as the abolition of the assessment centre meant that a key selection tool would no longer be applied, the reserve lists were simply made longer and it was left to the recruiting DGs to find suitable candidates on those lists. Of course, this didn’t solve the problem in any meaningful sense of the term “solution”, but at least someone else had to deal with it. 

However, EPSO never bothered to spell this out clearly to anyone, while DG HR only realised with some delay what they had really agreed to and that they now had a new problem on their hands. Not only would the reserve lists in future be populated by people no one had ever seen in the flesh, the recruiting DGs also had to ensure that recruited candidates met (at least broadly) the criteria considered essential for working in the Commission (see above) and not only the candidates’ professional suitability for a particular post. 

However, the Directorates-General are not prepared for this, neither in terms of personnel nor expertise. And DG HR was – and is – not prepared for this either, even though the new EPSO model was introduced some time ago. Many aspects and details of the new recruitment concept are still unclear, and DG HR does not seem to have the necessary resources to implement it. In fact, last time we looked, not a single post dedicated to putting the new recruitment model into practice had been published in Sysper while many of the experts at EPSO who could have helped, were left hung out to dry without a word of thanks, let alone their experience being recognised in any other way. Considering that hiring an official is equivalent to an investment of several million euros, this is indeed a remarkably sloppy use of taxpayers’ money. 

More seriously, under the pre-Covid EPSO model, candidates were interviewed several times and had to participate in a group exercise in order to test their transversal competencies and how they are able to collaborate with others. Under the new recruitment model, all this is to be achieved during a single interview whose main objective is to verify whether a candidate is fit for a specific job. Frankly speaking, it is hard to believe that even an amended job interview can test any of the transversal competencies in a meaningful and thorough way.  

Legal worries 

There is also the not-insignificant fact that it is far from clear whether the new recruitment model will stand up in court. After all, the court has made it sufficiently clear that selection with a view to create reserve lists and by means of general tests falls within the remit of a selection board. Simply relabelling something that was previously part of the selection process as recruitment is unlikely to convince the Luxembourg judges. 

The irony is that the new competition model was meant to reduce the length of selection procedures while imposing less work on juries, but now the recruiting directorates-general have to spend more time and effort than before to filter out the appropriate ones from the range of candidates on a reserve list. Despite all the warm words, this once again shows the gap between the Commission’s personnel policy and the reality on the ground. 

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