September 25, 2006
Who wants to be a functionnaire?
Those maligned servants of the European project have been much in the news since the FT revealed the astonishing incidence of mental illness and early retirement at the European institutions, principally the executive Commission.
Some maintain it is simply a way of squeezing out difficult or incompetent staff who are very difficult to fire. If not, is there something about building Europe that produces intolerable stress? Read more in the European court of auditors’report on the subject.
Certainly, working for multinational sovereign bodies brings unique difficulties. Rates of illness at the United Nations and International Labour Organisation are not much different. All have a strict hierarchy based on grades. All have some senior managers who advance thanks to political connections rather than ability. Some EU member states weigh their influence by how many of the top jobs in Brussels their nationals hold. In contrast with private employers, the Commission holds no data on ethnic minority recruitment but tries scrupulously to balance nationalities.
Then last week Finland, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, suggested that the Commission’s 22,000-strong bureaucracy could be trimmed by 800 with little discernible effect. That brought splutters of indignation from Brussels, where a spokeswoman said the Commission had not been consulted.
None of this shrinks the queue waiting to board the gravy train. A job for life in the "golden cage" comes with low taxes, free private schooling, good pensions and relocation allowances.
This year some 19,000 candidates took the notoriously tricky concours, testing knowledge of EU law, history, directives and second languages. There were just 210 jobs up for grabs. The only shortages are of competition lawyers, who can command more in the private sector, and communications experts. So why do the volunteers get such attractive perks in a borderless Europe where more and more of us have to get on the plane and look for work?
Perhaps Brussels, so keen on exposing others to the rigours of the market, should follow the laws of supply and demand and abolish the idea of a job for life.
Andrew Bounds
