No Xy Lo   No. 30 - 10 June 2013

Contents

Foreword: The multi-institution strike on June 5: an out-and-out success!

The multi-institution strike held by the European Public Service on June 5 was a complete success. On average, more than 75% of the colleagues came out. Well done, staff members, for excellent organisation. Well done to the staff associations for having worked towards and achieved the kind of united action which is essential to the defence of the European Public Service.

The excellent personnel turnout, particularly from the Commission, the Council, the EEAS, the Agencies and so on, is evidence of the strong desire on the part of all the colleagues to have nothing to do with the direction being taken by the Council of Ministers, particularly since their provocations, the liberties they have taken, and their refusal to abide by their own rules, has led to an almost wholesale rejection of their proposals.

The colleagues are united behind the Commission and the EP to defend the future of the European Public Services and not to countenance the emasculation of the Commission project, which they insist must be discarded.

The upcoming weeks will be decisive. We must continue to maintain our positions and to remain united in our diversity.

The Commission must emphasise social dialogue in this latter stage. It must strive to involve the personnel in current and future changes which have not yet been exposed to any kind of social dialogue.

The way democracy is handled in the European Union

The Member States and the EP are discussing the financial perspectives for 2014– 2020 with the Commission. If all goes "well", we are told that everything should be settled by July 2013.

The current budget is too small to drag Europe out of the crisis. If it were passed "in time", the point of the 2014 elections to renew the European Parliament would be meaningless, since the political decisions would have been already made. The Union is not just adopting bad policy; it is holding elections for no reason. We should therefore hardly be surprised by the growing indifference on the part of the people regarding elections which they see as a waste of time.

In addition to this, a recent Gallup poll stands in confirmation of the crisis of confidence in Europe:

A majority of French (62%) think that things are going in the wrong direction in the EU, and less than 1 in five (17%) think they are going in the right direction. If a referendum was held next week on whether Germany should leave the EU, just half of Germans say they would vote to stay (49%) while one in three (31%) say they would vote to leave.

This disappointment is now gathering momentum and is bound to have the very gravest of consequences for the construction of Europe.

Newspeak: "Reforms mean cuts!! Modernising means cutting back!!!"

Yet again, as in 2004, staff regulation reforms have been rejected by the personnel. Yet again, rather than the implementation of needed and valuable change, we have seen budgets slashed with no eye to the consequences.

The 2013 reform began with a budget cut of 1 billion euros, on top of the 20 billion in the 2004 reform. However, this was not enough, because a further 1.5 billion in savings was added on top, which then rose to 2.5 billion. Indeed, what this actually means in the light of the medium- and long-term salary freeze, is that the figure is really 6 or 7 billion euros.

This was how things stood in 2013. Now it transpires that the Council wants a great deal more besides. This is now starting to become tiresome.

The Commission is predicting a loss of purchasing power in the region of 50 to 60%. The desirability of working for the Public Service is under threat. Is the concept of a colleague recruited after 2014 who will not receive a full pension, while working until the age of 67 and paying higher contributions*, really conceivable?

This is an intolerable situation. It is intolerable that the institution should be burdened with yet more savings under pressure from the Council. It is intolerable that the employer can thumb his nose at the opinions of the staff and exclude them totally from any part in the change process.

* The Council is proposing that personnel should be responsible for 45% of pension funding rather than the current 33%.

ACs: a slightly more secure way to manage insecurity

According to the claims platform outlined by the Contract Agents’ Collective*, staff regulation reform provides for the extension of contracts to 6 years in central Commission departments and position-entitlement exams open to all the ACs.

During our most recent meeting with them at the EP, the case officers confirmed the fact that they were keen to factor in these two demands lodged by the staff: internal competitions and the extension of contracts to 5 or 6 years. This is good news, even if it is not yet 100% certain, since it is evidence of some progress in respect of the Parliament’s previous amendments.

U4U is also backing the demand lodged by the Contract Agents’ Collective for more secure management of their insecurity. This would allow ACs, on the basis of a single selection procedure, to take up subsequent professional career positions which would thus be almost on a permanent basis. This would mean that under the terms of these contracts an AC who had started work in a central DG could work in an office, a representation bureau, or an agency, etc.

The next meeting of the Contract Agents’ Collective will take place on June 18, 12:45 pm, Loi 2/206 Room 80. You are cordially invited.

* a committee of contract staff and permanents intending to build solidarity

Internal competitions: why can’t three be held?

The Commission has finally decided to hold re-categorisation exams with a view to mitigating some of the unfairness resulting from the 2004 reform and certain internal situations. These competitions are reserved for ATs and permanent staff.

U4U is campaigning to have three exams held. This is why we have launched a petition signed by over 1200 colleagues. It’s not too late to sign.

5,343 colleagues have registered for these competitive exams. The keen interest among staff for these exams validated the stance of U4U, who refused to paralyse the operations of the examining boards by failing to appoint any representatives. In actual fact, we shared with some other trade unions a number of objections, but U4U does not want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, thus depriving the colleagues of the chance to redress some injustices in the progress of their careers.

The next full meeting of the CPC will clarify the positions as they stand. Care must be taken to ensure that this conflict does not again endanger the joint nature of the boards, in the context of the current reform. U4U will be proposing that the CPC call on the DG HR to hold at least two more internal exams.

Let’s fight together, and let’s fight at the same time!

The diversity of the institution staff has grown because of successive enlargements and the increase in the number of administrative bodies and institutions. And we note that within each body, the range of categories and associated salary structures has also multiplied. This kind of staff explosion does not tend to lead to a united, joint defence, although this is the only kind which can be successful.

Staff mobilisation is also uneven across the various workplaces and institutions. While it is good to see the Council colleagues becoming involved more frequently in the battle against the attack on Staff Regulations, that involvement must also be united.

Let’s try to keep in step, and avoid slip-ups such as that of November 21 2012, when Commission staff struck at exactly the time Council staff had decided not to. And we can only apologise for the recent shambles in Luxembourg when, regardless of the opinion of their GA, some staff associations were calling for the strike not to be on June 5, and for it to be held on June 12 instead. Fortunately the members themselves ignored these Associations and went on strike with their colleagues on June 5. There is, of course, no strike on June 12, neither in the Commission nor in the European Parliament.

This year the European Schools are celebrating their 60^th birthday: could it be their swan song?

This year is the 60^th birthday of the European Schools System. In other words, students have now been earning their European Baccalaureate for 54 years.

But what can be seen as the result of this social-educational experiment begun sixty years ago? It has certainly been a success: you only have to spend a day in a school to be convinced that it still exists as a laboratory and a powerful force for Community integration. A great many alumni go on to study at higher levels of university education, and a great number of former pupils of the schools have won renown in their professions.

But the schools are now in the grip of a financial and governance crisis, a serious crisis… perhaps one that could prove terminal. Over half of the pupils eligible for the European Schools are going elsewhere. Successive reforms have undermined the schools, particularly as far as the teaching standard is concerned, despite the purpose claimed for them: to guarantee the viability of these schools. On the occasion of the European Council on the MFF, one State calmly suggested that these schools should be closed down, and other States seconded the suggestion. At one EU Council, the Presidency wrote that the governing council of the ESs was incapable of reaching a solution for this crisis, and the Council agreed to discuss it.

The schools were set up by parents. We now owe it to them to think very carefully, along with the professionals working at the schools, about how we can identify some solutions which will get us out of this quagmire. The time has come for the users to reclaim the initiative to rescue what remains of this unique educational model.

If you are a parent or a member of an APEEE [European School Parents’ Association], and if you would like to help U4U support this analysis, please join our working group by sending an email to REP-PERS-OSP-U4U@ec.europa.eu

How to counter the anti-EU propaganda in the Media ?

To counter the constant anti-EU media attacks, one can try to educate ordinary EU citizens about what the EU has done, how it works, how it has benefited Europe for more than 50 years.

How can we do this?

One aspect of the Lisbon treaty, is the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI). This enables a group that represents at least 7 EU Nationalities, the possibility of proposing some new policy to the Commission, and if they get 1,000,000 signatures, the Commission has to study the proposed policy and try and implement it.

An existing ECI is an initiative to introduce a ‘European Dimension’ into each National Education Curriculum. Teach secondary school students about the EU, its history, the fact that the EU has kept the peace in Europe for more than 50 years. Teach them about how the EU works. Facilitate the improved teaching of other EU languages in the schools, by enabling Language-teacher exchanges etc., and also change the mind-set of the next generation of School-leavers, so if they can’t find a job in their country, they don’t abandon the EU altogether and emigrate to Canada or Australia, but consider moving to say Germany or Brussels?

This Initiative is currently being proposed by a bunch of volunteers, via the Movement For European Education Trust. 

This site has explanations of the Initiative in several languages, with links to the Commission website run by DIGIT, to collect verified signatures. The online petition-collection system hosted by DIGIT has the explanations in most of the EU languages plus a possibility of selecting the Country you originate from, to sign the petition, to indicate your support for the initiative.

All EU Staff should sign this petition, plus their spouses and their family members who are old enough to vote. Those who sign are invited to become personal ambassadors of the initiative and use their individual social and professional networks to encourage others to sign.

Have your say ! Letters to the Editor

Fonds de grève

Chers collègues,
Merci pour votre e-mail et informations…
S'agissant du fonds de grève:
- n'est-ce pas un peu contradictoire avec le principe de la grève ?
- Quel est l'intérêt que certains donnent un % de leur salaire pour compenser la perte pour d'autres qui la suivrait… le principe est sympathique mais est-ce que ça n'aurait pas comme impact moins que de faire grève avec vous ?
Merci à vous

Disturbing news

The news about the proposed extreme cuts of remuneration of EU employees are disturbing when considering the short and long run adverse consequences:

- the EU will become instantaneously less competitive as an employer regarding alternative employment opportunities on the international level such as: UN, UNDP, OECD, IMF, WB, WTO, EBRD, EIB, ADB, BIS, etc.pp.
- its current unattractiveness for citizens from northern EU countries will not be solved but even worsened,
- is it intended that the EU employees in future will consist mainly of Eastern Europeans and Belgians, no more northern European people? If yes, why should this be a reasonable goal?,
- there will be gross unfairness vis-a-vis treatment of civil servants in other EU countries: NOT ONE EU country requires its national civil servants to have to undergo such extreme testing and proof of qualifications, including proof of proficient knowledge of two foreign languages (!), as the EU is requiring. Moreover, e.g. German civil servants (Beamte) do not pay one cent to their pension system: their pension system is 100% financed through tax revenues without any contributions from them; moreover, employment opportunities for spouses in Brussels are not comparable to the ones available in most home countries, etc. pp.;
- there are no salary cuts in northern EU countries but only increases, mostly even above the inflation rate. And is there any evidence of real custs of salaries of public civil servants in Italy, Spain, Portugal? (Very recent empirical analysis very surprisingly but true shows little if any evidence of cuts of real government expenditures in southern Europe so far);
- The EU system demonstrates by such a drastic salary cut short run panicking without taking into consideration medium- and long run aspects and thus will be forced in few years to reverrt its decisions taken now under panic: this would show to markets the opposite of balanced, souvereign decision making.
- any budget which needs to be administered produces administrative costs: e.g. asset management: usualy these costs range from 3-7% of the budget administered, mostly depending on quality, meaning higher costs tend to be associated with higher quality, i.e. performance. If the EU budget is at the top of this range, one consequently can expect quality and be proud of this quality and performance instead of deploring that one has paid so much: A budget administered at 3% cost and poor quality, nobody may want to have: increased anger at the budget may thus be a long run consequence.
It is very depressing to watch this development,

Throw the cap !

I have just one thing to say within the negotiations ongoing:
The capping of the 2% we can never accept. Why? Simple. Inflation is not something what just “happens”. Inflation is created by politicians and central bankers. So accepting capping of 2% simply will mean we will see an inflation rate of several years exceeding these 2% because the same people in the council with their so called “independent” central bankers will create inflation. They know this as there is no other solution for most MS to come out of their national budget deficits: decrease their debt by reducing the value of that debt! It is the one and only solution they have! And this severely weakens the position of our public service and our salaries in relation to our benchmark: the salaries of national civil servants. Besides that in our method there is already a component what takes the purchasing power of national civil servants into account. If the Council wants to lower our salaries the way is simple: lower the salaries of their own servants. Or is this a politically to hard process? Cowards!
We are not prepared giving a (signed!!) blank cheque to the Council. Certainly not after the unrespectfull way they treat their own and the personnel of the other institutions.
I hope you can do something with this and moreover do something about it!

Method while our salaries are frozen: no thanks

I think that no acceptation of applying a method based on the former one should be negotiated for as long as our salaries are FROZEN.
No acceptation to even consider discussing convergence between national public service conditions and ours. We should only consider comparison with other international institutions and the conditions of national civil servants expatriated (such as the members of the Perm. Reps. and any other embassies).
We accepted in 2004 a reduction of salaries and other rights in exchange for the removal of carrier barriers (C, B and A), we cannot accept other carrier barriers now.
Although I am in favour of negotiating a realignment between ante and post 2004 (I am personally a post 2004), especially for the pensions, this must be seen as a way for post 2004 to brought back to the level of ante 2004 not the other way around!

Team building

La RTD a une drôle de conception de la grève : voici un extrait du courriel reçu par tout le monde: "A strike is announced for Wednesday 5 June and you can strike if you want. Evens if you are on strike, you are still obliged to go to the Away Day."

Training to AST competitions (in FR)

Préparation aux épreuves de QCM verbal, numérique et raisonnement abstrait : deux sessions sont proposées :

• 19 juin après-midi, 20 juin toute la journée

• 26 juin après-midi, 27 juin toute la journée

Renseignements et inscription...

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UNION FOR UNITY – U4U
Éditeur: Georges Vlandas
Rédacteur en chef : V. Sfyroeras
Comité de Rédaction: Paul Clairet, Fabrice Andreone, Sylvie Vlandas, Tomas Garcia Azcarate,
Kim Slama, Gérard Hanney, Sazan Pakalin, Agim Islamaj, Yves Dumont,
Rafael Marquez Garcia, J.-P. Soyer, Daniel Baruchel, Carmen Zammit

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