WRITTEN QUESTION E-0391/99

by Ursula Stenzel (PPE) to the Commission

(1 March 1999)

Subject: Commission posts

This year the Commission has an establishment of only 16 420 members of staff, although it would have been entitled to employ 17 200.

1. Can the Commission explain why roughly one thousand posts were vacant in 1996, and this year too some 780 posts are vacant in the Commission's many departments?

2. Can the Commission explain why, as of 31 December 1998 (see Commission's report), so relatively few Austrians (132 women and 128 men) had been recruited by the Commission? The number of posts occupied by Finns (298 women and 155 men) and Swedes (274 women and 166 men) is, by contrast, considerably higher. Does the Commission agree that there is an obvious imbalance in the representation of the new Member States?

3. Can the Commission explain the formula according to which the new Member States are represented on the Commission's establishment?

Answer given by Mr Liikanen on behalf of the Commission

(14 April 1999)

1. The situation as regards vacant posts in the Commission has improved since the peak levels of 1995-97 (a table is being sent direct to the Honourable Member and Parliament's Secretariat). The reasons for the high number of vacant posts, of which there are now fewer than the 780 referred to by the Honourable Member, are to be found in structural and short-term trends.

The short-term reasons are twofold: firstly, the reserve lists of the successful candidates available are increasingly out of date and irrelevant and secondly, specific difficulties have been encountered in recruiting successful candidates from the enlargement competitions held since 1995. These short-term reasons account for about one third of the current number of vacant posts. They should disappear after 1999 thanks to the new reserve lists from the ongoing A open competitions (475 successful candidates - December 1999/January 2000) and the completion of recruitment from the new Member States.

The structural reasons for the large number of vacant posts are linked to the persistence of a certain rigidity in staff movements within the Directorates-General and the deliberate absence of any centralised recruitment system. The administration merely provides the lists and asks the DGs to draw from them and to monitor how they use them, thus giving the DGs and departments responsibility for their own recruitment arrangements.

A certain minimum number of vacant posts thus seems inevitable, given that the time limits for filling posts are extended by various administrative procedures such as publication, examination of applications, notification of candidates and adoption of decisions by the appointing authority. This minimum figure, which represents approx. 300/350 posts, or about 2 % of the staff, is the medium-term target set by the Commission for itself.

2. As the Honourable Member states, the numbers of nationals recruited from the three new Member States differ. This can be explained partly by the fact that it was necessary to recruit Swedish and Finnish nationals to cover language requirements whereas accession by Austria did not increase the number of official languages of the Union.

It is also true that the recruitment of Austrian nationals has progressed relatively slowly to date. The main reason is that a very small number of candidates sat the competition held for Austrian nationals, with the result that there were not enough successful candidates to meet the target set(1).

Recent competitions for Austrian nationals show that the situation has improved: a competition for Austrian principal administrators (COM/A/3/98) yielded 44 suitable candidates, some of whom are being recruited, a C5/4 competition has ended with 80 successful candidates and recruitment has already begun; and a B5/4 competition expected to yield 70 successful candidates will be completed shortly.

3. In February 1995, the Commission decided to spread the overall recruitment targets for officials from the new Member States over a period of five years (1995-99). The breakdown was to be as follows: 1050-1350 A, B, C and D posts, with 400-500 posts for Austrian nationals, 400-500 for Swedish nationals and 250-350 for Finnish nationals (not including language requirements). These figures were established in order to ensure that the new Member States were adequately represented in the Commission in accordance with Article 27 of the Staff Regulations. For that purpose the Commission applied demographic criteria based on the number of nationals recruited from a similar Member State.

(1) For example competition COM/B/949 (grade B1) attracted only 35 candidates, of which only 8 were admitted to the competition, while 50 posts were offered.