M. Barroso, the staff is calling you!

Are you worried by your career’s slow progress? Is the 2010 promotion exercise  giving you problems? Are you are among the 4000 Civil Servants who submitted an appeal against their CDR in 2009? Are you fascinated by the lightning progress envisaged for the best in the Madelin Report? R&D, always at your service, places before you the miracle recipe to “boost” your career. 

The “normal” career, and the rapid …

Remember that in most grades, to have a normal career (a promotion approximately every four years) you need to obtain 6 points annually, while almost half the staff get 5 points or fewer. If you are among the happy 30% or staff who were classed in groups IA and IB, you are already on track for a rapid career. But even if you have amassed 12 points in your rucksack, that is only a miserable bagatelle compared with the career acceleration which could be guaranteed by appointment to a post… such as Principal Adviser …

… and the meteoric

Let us try with a completely “fictional” example. You are appointed to work for a cabinet, you are hardly forty years old, you have just been promoted to AD10 and you are working out how many years and CDRs you need to wait before getting to AD14 (a minimum of 17 years according to Annex IB of the staff conditions). You are disheartened and demotivated by nothing more than this simple perception? You tell yourself that this could happen only in the Commission of the “Madelin Report”?

You don’t need to be…. you only need to be appointed at grade AD14…as Principal Adviser! 

You think it’s a joke in poor taste! Because you haven’t even reached age 40 and you tell yourself that at that age you would never have the professional experience to be appointed to such a post …you are even more convinced by thinking that if the Commission puts out an internal competition for posts of team leaders at AD12, asking for 15 years of professional experience at your age you have no chance of obtaining a post at AD14 ….

You have dreamt about it? The Commission has done it!

Well no, you are underestimating the possibilities our institution can offer!  No defeatism… all desires, even the most audacious, can be satisfied… from the list of promotions to AD10 to a nomination at AD14 as Principal Adviser in a few months and from one day to the next a jump of 4 grades and a salary increase of more than 60%…. that’s what happened to an official previously allocated to a cabinet. We wish to extend our congratulations to her for such a feat, which reminds us of other miracles in the final days of the Prodi Commission! More than120 CDR points in less than one year … it is a feat never before accomplished.

An extra source of demotivation for staff

Such promotions and nominations are particularly sickening for all our colleagues who were recruited just after 1 May 2004 and had passed a competition for a much higher grade. In contrast to our Principal Advisers, a good number of these officials will spend all their professional lives at the Commission trying to obtain a promotion to the grade they should have been recruited to. That can only reinforce the sense of injustice and reinforce R&D’s determination to defend the interests of new recruits and to denounce all these abuses.

What sort of management and what nomination procedures do we need so the Commission is seen as strong and credible by Member States!

R&D is wondering what type of management the Commission wants to recruit in the next few years and whether efforts are made to allay the fears and fulfil legitimate expectations of staff concerning nomination procedures. Within 10 years, 60% of the existing hierarchy will have retired. It’s time to think about it.

R&D believes that the nomination procedure for the hierarchy should be totally transparent. It should look to employ solid managers whose careers can withstand any criticism or perceived lack of transparency. Our Institution should reinforce its influence. It needs fully to resume its role of engine of the European Union and firmly reject any diktats from Member States.

All this will only be possible if the Commission provides itself with a management of excellence chosen by exemplary and comprehensible selection processes for everyone and which does not raise all the questions surrounding the above-mentioned official’s exploit which we used as our “fictional” example and whom we wish once more to congratulate!

R&D is asking President Barroso to explain himself, and to communicate his vision to his staff, during the meeting he has organised for May 11.

Europe is above all an ideal which – if it is going to have a great future – should provide itself with a management up to the job!