| “Large Scale Review” Vs “Teleworking outside the place of Employment” ♫♪♪ E’ inutile suonare qui, non ti aprirà nessuno… ♫♪♪ Back in 1979, the famous Italian Singer Adriano Celentano, in his song “Soli” was singing that “E’ inutile suonare qui, non ti aprirà nessuno…” meaning that “it doesn’t make any sense to knock on this door, because no one will ever open to you” and this is exactly the feeling we got during the presentation of the Large Scale Review (LSR) recommendations by Commissioner Serafin, Stephen Quest and the other colleagues with regards to the possibility to telework for more than 10 days outside the place of Employment (telework “abroad”, TWA). During the last 1.5 years, since the “inception phase” of the LSR, during the LSR all staff event in November 2025, the LSR suggestion box, in various comments on “My Intracomm”, the recommendations by the Central Staff Committee and in various other forms of contribution, one of the most frequent topics raised by staff the need for more flexibility with regards to the TWA. In this direction, in the past, and in order to help the Commission to implement the right approach, R&D has already made clear its analysis and proposals : Renard Déchaîné special “Flexible Working and Tele/Work From Anywhere in a modern EU Administration” – Renouveau & Démocratie. Besides, the Staff was told that the LSR exercise would genuinely look into all suggestions and there was a legitimate expectation that an important analysis on TWA would also take place; R&D and all colleagues were hoping to read such an analysis in the final workstream report (of almost 400 pages). Such was the interest and need for that, that in the All Staff event of 13 July 2026, during the “Slido” poll, the term “teleworking from abroad” was the most popular suggestion. Reasonably, a question was asked and Mr Quest replied that there are various obstacles that do not allow HR to go beyond the 10 working days; it was also suggested that the fact that the Expatriation allowance would not allow an increase of the 10 days. But this does not appear to be an obstacle for other institutions subject to the same Staff Regulations: The European Council allows staff to telework from abroad for 15 days, and the Court of Auditors offers 30 days. Do they face problems with the expatriation allowance? Apparently not. And the Staff Rules of the European Central Bank (ECB), which also provide for a 16% expatriation allowance (Conditions of Employment, ECB), do not prevent the ECB from granting 90 days of telework abroad (What we offer). Directly after the LSR all staff event, the final report of this phase was published on Myintracomm. In there, a fast search for “telework” gave just 3 results, and of those 3, only 2 for TWA, with one being only for Luxembourg. How is this possible? All staff insists on something and the response is practically inexistent, as if this point was “prohibited” to discuss? And… While R&D understands that it is very early for conclusions, and that the LSR doesn’t finish today, we are indeed perplexed about this early result. We do believe that the administration has good intentions and probably misunderstood the Staff needs. R&D would like to offer the benefit of doubt to the Commissioner and the LSR team. We will now wait for the report of the High level group and of the final report of the exercise. We hope that our expectations will be met in the next stages of the exercise, and that the TWA will be genuinely analysed, taking into account the Interests of the productivity of the Service, the need to promote the attractiveness and inclusivity of the Commission as an employer and the wellbeing of staff. Cristiano SEBASTIANI, Chair Until then, we recommend the nice song of Adriano Celentano: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIICEt1-STY&list=RDFIICEt1-STY&start_radio=1 ♫♪♪ Era importante sai, pensare un poco a noi… ♫♪♪ (It was important, you know, to think a little about us) |
Renouveau & Démocratie
The Union For Staff of the European Institutions