Letter for the attention of M. Markku Markkula

President of the Committee of the Regions

Mr President,

We acknowledge receipt of your letter of 3 February 2017 in reply to our open letter of 27 January about the internal competitions that you are planning to organize in the European Committee of the Regions. We can only reiterate our astonishment as to the answers you gave us.

Indeed, it seems necessary to remind you that during the period of crisis that the European institutions are currently facing, it is essential to observe the utmost caution and to act in full compliance with the legislative texts and the Staff Regulations. This double obligation applies in particular to “internal competitions” and to “mobility” in respect of positions of a political nature.

It might also certainly be useful to remind you that your competition project raises (too many) legal doubts; the representative Trade Union Organizations participating in the negotiations which you have referred to, have not failed to point this out. At this stage, it can be said that there has been a total disregard of these objections. As an example, it is surprising that your project does not make any mention, in accordance with Article 12 (4) of the CEOS, of the only competent body (i.e. EPSO) that has the necessary expertise to verify that the temporary agents have been recruited following a selection procedure ensuring the application of the same criteria, as for the selection of officials.

Organizing an internal “competition” to draw up a reserve list of ten successful candidates to fill ten posts, with a dozen potential candidates among the temporary agents, is purely and simply a masquerade. To save everyone’s time and taxpayers’ money, we could already publish the list of successful candidates.

And you would like this procedure to be justified in terms of “mobility”! As we already mentioned, it would be indecent if such a mockery of selection would allow agents to claim access not only to the highest ranks of the European civil service but also to serve in all the other institutions of the Union.

Again, obviously, the CoR  lives in a bubble on another planet. It is time to bring it back to Earth.

In particular, you seem to keep on ignoring that, pursuant to Article 29(1) of the Staff Regulations, there is a “normal” internal competition procedure open to officials and temporary agents which we kindly invite you to discover and implement.

It is absolutely unacceptable that the CoR is striving to draw up a fanciful competition notice and to try unsuccessfully to justify the use of the exceptional procedure under Article 29(3) of the Staff Regulations, when everybody clearly sees that the only aim is to carry out a political “recasting” operation.

Errare humanum est, perseverare diabolicum.

Cristiano Sebastiani

President