Parliament recruitment under attack

Date: 14/09/00

By John Shelley

THE EU'S watchdog has told the European parliament to make its recruitment procedure more transparent following complaints from disgruntled applicants.

Ombudsman Jacob Söderman says the assembly should follow the lead of the European Commission, which adopted new openness rules to govern recruitment this summer.

The recommendation comes after four disgruntled competition candidates complained to the Ombudsman that they were not allowed to see their marked exam papers. Söderman says there is no reason to keep these documents secret. "The position is contrary to the general principle of openness recognised in the Amsterdam Treaty," said an aide to the Ombudsman.

The assembly has consistently denied candidates access to their examination papers and Parliament officials say they are reluctant to change this, arguing that the current appeals process is satisfactory and following the Ombudsman's recommendations would complicate the process without making the examination system any fairer.

"At a certain point you have to trust the people you appoint to select candidates to do their job properly," said one. "There are a huge number of people who apply to these competitions and inevitably most of them fail. We would not want to create a situation where we were giving people false hopes that decisions might be changed."Secrecy in EU recruitment has long been the cause of complaints to the Ombudsman, who launched an own-initiative inquiry into the Commission's policy in 1997. When the situation did not improve, Söderman referred the issue to MEPs - the strongest action he can take.

This report included a formal recommendation that candidates should be given access to their examination papers, a suggestion the Commission finally adopted in July this year.

The EU's watchdog has told the European Parliament to make its recruitment procedure more transparent following complaints from disgruntled applicants.