The Reform of the European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO) Selection Procedures: the First Lessons Learned

On 11 September 2008, EPSO published its ‘Roadmap for Implementation’ of the Development Programme (hereafter EDP). It set out an ambitious plan of an overhaul of the selection process undertaken by EPSO in only two years. The EDP was indeed largely completed by early 2010. Later that year, the first rounds of open competitions under the new regime were launched.

This article aims to make an initial assessment of the main results of the EDP related to the new design of the personnel selection procedures, numbers and profiles of the candidates sought as well as the language regimes. It also intends to provide a critical assessment of the EDP by highlighting the strategic decisions made by EPSO in the context of a number of policy dilemmas related mostly to time-frames of open competitions, costs and overall efficiency of personnel selection and by enumerating a selection of inconsistencies of the EDP. Finally, the paper proposes a selection of measures for maximisation of benefits of the reform.

[Article forms part of 30th Anniversary Special Issue of EIPASCOPE]

EIPASCOPE: Archive http://www.eipa.eu/en/eipascope/archive/

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