ECB unions fear Euro-11 staff policy

Date: 10/06/1999

By Tim Jones

UNIONS at the European Central Bank are becoming increasingly concerned at the tendency of the Frankfurt-based institution to hire staff from outside the euro-area's 11 national monetary authorities.

They believe that the ECB's reluctance to do so stems from fears that former employees of national central banks would not be truly independent.

" It is quite normal that the ECB should want more people, since people there are working 60-hour weeks, but we wonder how it is possible that people from national central banks are not recruited by Frankfurt," said Frans Vanderschelde, chairman of the Standing Committee of ECB Unions.

The ECB operates at the hub of a European System of Central Banks (Eurosystem), which carries out key functions such as money market intervention, national economic and monetary research and the printing of euro banknotes. The bank has 604 staff members in Frankfurt and has recruited most of the extra 163 employees it has budgeted to hire by the end of this year.

But the institution aims to expand to 900 staffers within two years, prompting the unions to put pressure on senior management to consider economists and operations specialists from euro-zone countries' national banks.

They reject protestations from Frankfurt that their members have been turned down on quality grounds. "I think they do it for the same reason that they want the central bank to be autonomous in monetary policy," said Vanderschelde. "Some people at the ECB are a little afraid that when they recruit from the national central banks, these new people will be under the influence of their former employer."

ECB employees from outside the Eurosystem account for 55% of the total payroll.