Stiff test for budding Eurocrats

Date: 15/02/1996

THEY hold some of the most coveted jobs in Europe, envied for their generous pay packets, supposedly glamorous life-styles and privileged position as participants in the EU 'adventure'.

But few bother to look beyond headlines describing them as “fat cat Eurocrats” or “passengers on the Euro gravy train” to discover who they are and how they secured the jobs they now hold.

In theory, all would-be Euro civil servants with ambitions to become permanent members of staff in EU institutions must first pass the concours, the infamous entrance examination for budding Eurocrats - although some do succeed in bypassing the system, much to the annoyance of those who endured the sweat and tears involved in preparing for the exam.

But the traditional method of selecting would-be Eurocrats now faces a shake-up as the European Commission prepares for the prospect of an EU comprising as many as 25 member states.

Personnel Commissioner Erkki Liikanen's staff are now working on changes to the examination which should be given their first airing when the next competition is held for officials from all member states this autumn.

“The concours was designed for a Community of six with a few hundred officials, whereas now we have 15 member states with 11 official languages. The time is ripe for a real shake-out before we enlarge any further,” explained a senior official.

Personnel staff are also aware that the operation must be slimmed down. The last competition for graduates from the old EU-12 attracted 56,000 candidates for 600 positions.

The popular perception - particularly in countries with a relatively low proportion of EU fonctionnaires - is that the concours is a francophone invention, weighted in favour of the French-style educational system. Many also feel that there is discrimination in the way candidates are expected to lobby for a job, even when they have successfully struggled through the various examinations. Others claim that much of the test is of little relevance in judging the abilities of potential EU civil servants.

Rejecting the first argument, officials point out that the roots of the concours in fact date back to ancient China. Their response to the second argument has been more pro-active, with work on redesigning the concours now well-advanced.

Faced with increasing doubts about the relevance of the traditional general knowledge test and with many questioning the value of asking applicants 'Who wrote The Marriage of Figaro?' and 'Who invented the lift?', the Commission decided recently to drop this from the concours.

Prospective candidates now face pre-selection tests specifically on their knowledge of the history and institutions of the EU, and on their command of a second official Union language. The results they gain in these - which are marked by computer - determine whether they are among the lucky ones whose answers to the more exhaustive written tests are passed to in-house examiners.

Stage two of the concours involves lengthy essay questions designed to test candidates' ability to express logical arguments clearly and make a detailed study of a large dossier of official documents in a limited space of time.

Those that pass this stage are then invited for a panel interview - often conducted in three languages - which narrows numbers down to the final lucky few.

But even this does not guarantee a job for the successful candidates. Historically, twice as many people have been placed on reserve lists than there are jobs available - another tradition under threat as the EU prepares for enlargement. “Doing the concours is like running a marathon. You need to have stamina. If you're on the list and then don't get a position, it gets rather like a triathlon,” said one official.

Liikanen has also highlighted the need to take a longer term view of the sort of civil servants the EU wants to see rising up through its ranks in the next couple of decades.

The Commission recently asked a firm of management consultants to look into what sort of skills were required and see whether machine-readable tests could be devised to assess whether candidates possessed the necessary abilities.

The results were clear. The EU civil servants of the future will need to be able to write well, assimilate large amounts of highly technical information quickly and have basic arithmetical skills.

“We've detected an aversion to the old-style reasoning tests in some cultures. A wider range of tests will also dilute the overriding emphasis in the pre-selection tests on languages and EU knowledge. You're bound to know more about the Union if you live in Etterbeek than if you live in Rhodes. A Swede or Dutchman is generally going to be better at a foreign language than an Irishman,” said an official.

More fundamentally, the Commission is asking itself whether it can continue to run enormous open concours - held on the same day in every EU member state - in an expanding Union.

One idea is to move towards separate concours by language groups, which would also help to ensure a rough geographical balance in the officials recruited.

While there is a commitment to prevent discrimination, there are no firm quotas in the regulations to ensure an even distribution of nationalities. The most up-to-date statistics show that 3,700 Commission officials (26&percent; of the total) are from Belgium. The UK, a much bigger country, has just 1,150 (8&percent;).

But the bald statistics hide the fact that Belgians make up a high proportion of secretarial and ancillary staff. Among A-grade officials, both Belgium and the UK have 11&percent; of the total, while France has 16&percent;.

Liikanen has, however, steered clear of lifting the age restriction which limits open competitions to the under-35s, despite pressure from the European Parliament to do so - even though it operates the same system.

Officials insist that to change, or remove, the age limit would aggravate the current geographical and sexual imbalance within the institutions, arguing the young are more willing to uproot from the EU's peripheral regions and move to Brussels.

For the moment, recruitment policy is dominated by the last EU enlargement. A special derogation from the rules was agreed to allow concours specifically for nationals from Austria, Finland and Sweden.

The new intake has provided fresh impetus to increase the number of common competitions for recruitment to all Union institutions. Cooperation in recruitment is already well under way. Several common competitions are now being held, with evident opportunities for considerable economies of scale.

It is also clear that recruitment will not be able to increase at the speed it has over the past few years. With unemployment rising in the Union as a whole, the institutions expect an increasing number of candidates for a decreasing number of jobs.

Liikanen is thought to be considering shedding ancillary and secretarial staff to make more room for A grades without increasing overall staffing numbers.

But despite the changes under way, the EU's recruitment system still has its detractors, including those who claim that there are myriad ways of circumventing the concours.

“It's difficult and if you get through it you deserve a job. What is sickening is the way so many people can still get around it,” commented one observer, who admitted to being an “embittered failure”.

Although short-term contracts can, it seems, be extended indefinitely, one official who has now passed the concours at his second attempt after years in the Commission points out: “I could never have hoped for a long-term career in the Commission as a political parachutee unless I passed the concours.”

Another disgruntled observer claimed that “utterly unqualified people” could find their way into Commissioners' Cabinets by bypassing the concours.

While the Commission confesses it is inevitable that people are brought into the higher grades by appointment from the member states, it insists that an element of competition is used wherever possible.

However, stories also abound of questionable practices during exams, including the famous tale of a group of Italians reputedly in mobile-phone contact with their friends outside the examination building.

But the staff unions are generally satisfied with the form the concours takes, although Alan Hick of Union Syndicale - which represents the majority of EU officials - stresses that “rather than mega-competitions with elimination through Trivial Pursuit questions, more account should be taken of each candidate's academic record and individual file”.

Last year's competitions to fill graduate posts with nationals from Austria, Sweden and Finland did, however, dispel one concern about the concours, stemming from figures showing fewer women make the grade than men. The results convinced the Commission's personnel department that the tests are not intrinsically biased against female candidates.

One official offered an interesting suggestion to explain why women have traditionally faired less well in the concours than men. “There is a theory that women have done less well in the pre-selection tests because they are more averse to risk-taking and less prepared to chance their arm in multiple-choice exams,” he said.