CoR selection process under fresh attack

Date: 21/06/01

By David Cronin

Staff recruitment practices in one of the EU's youngest institutions, the Committee of the Regions (CoR), face a fresh legal challenge after a probe by the Union's citizen watchdog found they amounted to maladministration.

Ombudsman Jacob Söderman has upheld a complaint from a former CoR employee, who had passed an exam for the position of coordinator with its European Alliance political group in 1996.

While the woman was not offered the post at that time, she was told she would be placed on a reserve list and would be notified if it became available in the future.

But when a vacancy for the same job arose last year, the CoR failed to inform her. Instead, the A-grade position was filled by a man who was not even on the reserve list.

The complainant is now planning to take her case to the European Court of First Instance in Luxembourg because the Ombudsman's verdict is not legally enforceable.

This is the second time this year that the selection process for CoR officials has been called into question. In April, European Voice revealed that a case has been filed with the Luxembourg court over alleged irregularities in the appointment of the highest-ranking official with the 222-member assembly, Secretary-General Vicenzo Falcone.

CoR spokesman Patrizio Fiorilli angrily dismissed suggestions that there is anything improper about the way the institution hires its staff. "There is nothing, I repeat nothing, illegal about any of this," he said.

But the body - founded in 1994 to give representatives from local and regional government a say in EU law-making - has fought a protracted battle with staff unions over its recruitment processes.

In the mid-1990s Union Syndicale supported two successful cases over the appointment of CoR officials, who were offered posts without being required to sit the standard concours examination.

Alan Hick, head of the union's Brussels branch, said he had been given an assurance by the assembly's first president, Jacques Blanc, that the bypassing of normal selection procedures would only be a "one-off" because people with special experience were being sought. "But the fact is that they are continuing to recruit people in this way," Hick said.

Meanwhile, Fiorilli has acknowledged that the post of financial controller - key for ensuring the institution's smooth management - is currently being performed by someone in an acting capacity. Several applications for the post were received in 2000 but nobody has yet been appointed full-time.

In total, 40 of the CoR's 236 staff posts are held by people on temporary contracts. "In the majority of cases, positions filled by temporary agents are done so because finding a suitable candidate can take over a year and we can't afford to keep positions vacant for that long," Fiorilli explained.

The spokesman also insisted that the fact several people occupying coveted CoR posts are related to those working for other EU institutions is coincidental. Those officials include Falcone's chief adviser Michael Collins, nephew of former Irish foreign minister and current MEP Gerry Collins, and Timo Allgeier, son of Herbert Allgeier, who was head of the Commission's Joint Research Centre. The coincidence was brought to European Voice's attention in a leaked memo. "The CVs of candidates' relatives are not taken into account," Fiorilli said. "The fact that their granny was making tea for [late British Prime Minister] Harold Wilson does not guarantee them a job but neither does it make them ineligible. "

Staff recruitment practices in one of the EU's youngest institutions, the Committee of the Regions (CoR), face a fresh legal challenge after a probe by the Union's citizen watchdog found they amounted to maladministration.