Promotions for grades AD12 et AD 13
“Stranglehold” of the cabinets on AD12 internal competitions
AD14/15 senior management posts through “establishment exercise-parachutings” and “kangaroo-parachutings”
Following our previous messages ( Exclusive private sales -70% ; Breaking news: parachuting no longer exist? ; PMO-télépathie d’un parachutage annoncé-décembre2013; Le Renard Déchaîné-AMI pour les AC, parachutages, concours internes-octobre 2013; The end of the College is near, and the parachuting season is starting), concerning the various decisions involving Cabinet staff (grades AD12, parachutings and internal competitions), many of you congratulated us on the transparency of our analysis and encouraged us to pursue our efforts at all levels. You also asked us to make the relevant documents accessible to staff – please find enclosed a copy of these documents and information, which are also available and accessible to all on my IntraComm or SysPer2.
1. Promotions for grades AD12 et AD13
This is a decision taken by the College, by an oral procedure, following a communication from the President. It is a decision adopted «secretly» without any discussion/information exchange with the staff representatives who were, on the same days, busily discussing, in a difficult climate, the fate of thousands of their “normal” colleagues. The Commission has thereby decided to grant special treatment to all AD12 and AD 13 colleagues within the cabinets independently of their duties, despite being the ONLY institution not to have considered any measure for the career advancement of “normal” colleagues in the same grades and even refuses to apply the transitional measures planned in that regard in the new statute!
2. “Stranglehold” of the cabinets on AD12 internal competitions
Annex 2: lists of the internal competition lauréates for the AD12 competition and the cabinet they belong to published by European Voice
In order to explain R&D’s special attention to this competition, it should be recalled that:
– R&D and staff representatives were opposed to the organisation of an internal competition in such high AD grade.
Indeed, considering the conditions imposed on the applicants for eligibility (minimum grade AD10), it was undeniable that this internal competition did not, in any way, satisfy the claimed political purpose, namely an attempt to compensate for damages suffered by civil servants recruited after 2004.
Thus, as soon as DG HR showed its willingness to organise an internal competition in this grade category, R&D immediately decried that it was really about yet another element of the quasi-military arrangements put into place by the Barroso Commission for the special treatment of cabinets at the end of its mandate.
– R&D underlined that it was inconceivable to allow Temporary Agent candidates with only 2 years of experience within our institution, of which only one year in the AD function group (sic!), to become an AD12 official which represents the culmination of a career of at least 25 years and 7 promotions for a typical colleague recruited following a long and very selective general competition! And this as a result of a simple interview in the context of an internal competition without even a written examination, based on a talent screener with questions clearly biased in order to favour cabinet staff.
– Faced with this irrefutable observation, the administration did not hide its irritation and had accused R&D of making malicious speculations. The Commission had strived to explain “that there was no need to focus on the Cabinets’ Temporary Agents since they only represent a very limited number among all the Temporary Agents of the Commission, who in turn, are very few among the AD” … while naturally forgetting to take into account the fact that unlike those who were recruited in the other services, the cabinet colleagues are largely concentrated in higher grades thereby making them eligible for this internal competition.
The results of this internal AD12 competition easily allow us to understand the relevance of the Commission’s reassuring and mollifying declarations, the “unfounded and malicious” nature of the R&D analysis and to appreciate the true stranglehold of the cabinets:
Indeed, when reading the reserve list of this internal competition, it seems that not only 40% of the successful applicants are assigned to the cabinets, but no candidate AT or Civil Servant from DG BUDG, COMP, DGT, DIGIT, EAC, ECFIN, EMPL, ENER, ENTR, FPI, HOME, HR, IAS, MARE, MOVE, OIB, OIL, OLAF, OP, PMO, RTD, SANCO, SCIC, TAXUD appears on this list. However, the cherry on the cake was the 4th domain of activity, “Knowledge and experience in the field of inter-institutional relationships”, where 75% of the laureates come from the cabinets!… In such conditions, it is difficult to comply with the administration’s advice not to focus on the Temporary Agents of the cabinets…
These are the fruits of a deliberate political intent which R&D had foreseen without even needing to resort to our now legendary divinatory abilities that have allowed us to know the names of the “parachutists” even before the publication of the appointment procedures aiming at selecting them.
3. AD14/15 senior management posts through “establishment exercise-parachutings” and “kangaroo-parachutings”
The true invasion of parachuting operations on senior management posts constitutes the other element of the same mechanism set up to manage the end of mandate of the Barroso Commission.
As the staff representatives already did in the COPAR Joint Committee, R&D yet again asks the Commission to provide a detailed list of all the appointments to senior management posts that were carried out during the course of the last year concerning former cabinet members who did “establishment exercise-parachuting operations” for Temporary Agent colleaugues and “kangaroo-parachuting operations” for civil servant counterparts who climbed several grades at once!
And, while not counting on the spirit of trancperency characterising this more than troublesome end-of-mandate of the Barroso Commission, R&D will do its best everywhere possible, to have this information provided to us.
R&D wishes to point out that in its actions, it has never denied the merits of the colleagues working in a cabinet, HOWEVER R&D is only opposed to a scandalous political management for some of its colleagues’ careers in contempt of the remaining staff taht is subjected to inceasingly restictive conditions.
What is even more serious is that we are in a crucial political phase for our public service that is subjected to increasingly virulent attacks, with a career advancement falsely portrayed as completely disconnected from any form of analysis of the merit of each of us!
The College ends, some “happy few” are delighted but ultimately it is the staff and our public service that bear the brunt!
R&D looks forward to the political promise of President Juncker concerning the fact that equity will be at the heart of the Commission’s action and wishes to see that it will allow the common mortal to have a career worthy of their merits, a career held in such contempt since 2004.
R&D calls on President Juncker to establish, without delay and before the creation of a new College, clear and transparent conditions for the career management of colleagues, who will be allocated to future cabinets, stopping once and for the aberrations seen at the end of each College: territory in which the Barroso Commission has surpassed all limits!