A senior adviser to the European Commission has suggested it should consider scrapping permanent civil service jobs.
“We definitely have to look at increasing the speed of recruiting the right kind of people, but also recruiting different talents, and maybe not for lifetime employment,” said Catherine Day, a former top EU civil servant who’s now carrying out a review of the 32,000-strong institution.
Speaking to Paul Adamson’s Encompass Europe podcast on Monday, Day said that the EU executive should hire more tech experts and engineers, rather than the lawyers and economists who populated the institution during her tenure as secretary-general between 2005 and 2015.
Day spent nearly four decades in the Commission between 1979 and 2018. Most posts in the European Commission are permanent roles, allowing officials to stay in until the retirement age of 66. Only 22.2% of the Commission’s staff are under 40, according to figures from January.
The system for bringing in fresh talent is also under strain. EPSO, the Commission’s selection office, has buckled under expensive IT problems that have slowed recruitment.
“There are different ways of making the EU work that don’t involve micromanagement from the Commission,” Day said.
She now leads a “reflection group” that will guide a review of the civil service by Administration Commissioner Piotr Serafin. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called for the review when she was re-elected as president last year.
Day is examining ideas including how AI could improve the institution’s operations, with her report expected by the end of 2026. She said some of the proposals may only be phased in after 2029, during the next five-year mandate of the Commission.
In the podcast, Day also suggested most officials are motivated by a desire to work for Europe, rather than money. “If you want to make huge amounts of money, it’s not the place to come,” she said. Though EU officials do pay a “community tax,” their salaries are exempt from national tax, and can reach as high as €25,000 a month for the most senior officials.
“There is an image of a faceless bureaucracy,” she added. “But you know and I know that once you’re in it, it’s endlessly fascinating.”
(cz)
