According to a report (https://bit.ly/3e8AHaT ) published on Thursday 29 October by the European Court of Auditors, the European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO) should review the way it selects new recruits for the EU civil service.
The auditors found that EPSO’s selection processes are unsuitable for attracting specialists through small-scale targeted competitions.
EPSO selects EU officials through two main types of competition (large or smaller scale).
“EPSO competitions are the gateway to a career in the EU civil service, but no longer meet the EU institutions’ current recruitment needs”, said Annemie Turtelboom, author of the report. “EPSO must reconsider its selection process and launch a new, faster, more flexible and cost-effective system for selecting specialists, and ramp up its capacity in order to adapt to the fast-changing recruitment environment”, she said.
For small-scale targeted competitions, the auditors pointed out that the selection processes organised by the institutions themselves were generally cheaper and faster than those of EPSO. EPSO does not target its communications consistently towards attracting good candidates, and that applicants with strong specialist profiles risk early elimination in psychometric exams before their job-specific knowledge is even tested, the report says.
Two thirds of EPSO’s EU Careers events take place in Brussels and EPSO attracts mainly EU nationals already based in Brussels or Luxembourg. “This hampers geographic and socio-economic diversity within EU institutions”, according to the Court. EPSO is struggling to attract enough graduates or young professionals to a career in the EU (the proportion of candidates under 35 years of age is decreasing) and the candidates recruited were not significantly higher than staff recruited by other means. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)