Report pursuant to Article 27 of the Staff Regulations and to Article 12 of the Conditions of Employment of Other Servants of the European Union

As a general rule, discrimination on the basis of nationality is prohibited by the Treaties, the Charter of Fundamental Rights and the Staff Regulations. At the same time, the Staff Regulations require that EU institutions recruit staff from the broadest possible geographical basis. The balance between these two elements already enables the institutions to take nationality into account, even for filling specific posts where qualifications of the various applicants are substantially the same.

With the reform of the Staff Regulations in 2013 and its reference to the principle that all the Union's citizens are equal, the co-legislators introduced a new legal basis for each institution to adopt appropriate measures where a significant imbalance between nationalities of officials, which is not justified by objective criteria, is observed. The aim of this amendment was to provide for the necessary legal means to deal with situations of significant imbalance, which would be in contradiction with the very principle of equality of citizens of the Union.

This report deals with the level of representation of nationals of each Member State among staff of the institutions to whom the Staff Regulations apply.