European Commissioner for Budget Johannes Hahn said on Thursday 28 April that his services were putting in place measures to speed up the process of recruiting staff in the EU institutions.
Addressing the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs, where he presented the new human resources strategy for the Commission (see EUROPE 12927/31), Mr Hahn said that “we receive more than 100,000 applications every year to join the European institutions. As far as the Commission is concerned, we have 1,500 recruitments per year”.
The recruitment procedures are very cumbersome, but we are trying to simplify things, he assured. A new model has been introduced involving fewer steps for recruitment, there is a reorganisation of services and more IT tools are used in the selection process, said Johannes Hahn.
He also assured that measures will be taken to strengthen the geographical balance of staff, including action plans that take into account the specificities of each Member State.
In close cooperation with the European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO), the Commission “will put in place faster, more modern and more flexible selection and recruitment procedures for internal and external candidates, in order to be in line with other public and private organisations”, explains the new human resources strategy.
The Commission will not propose any changes to the Regulation on the status of European officials, Commissioner Hahn finally confirmed. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)