Since the 1960s, the EU institutions have relied on a system of open competitions (or concours ) for hiring staff, with only incremental changes. That system is now undergoing a major reform that is currently in the implementation phase. A policy analysis approach explains how the leadership of the European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO) overcame resistance to change. Analysis from a public management and political sociology perspective sheds light on the challenges EPSO faces in the implementation and evaluation of the reform.
Points for practitioners
One strength of the EU staffing model is the active role of EU staff in selecting their peers through the use of Selection Boards. The new system maintains staff involvement while professionalizing the Selection Boards. The reform was responsive to complaints by managers and heads of EU institutions with a slow, complex, and antiquated system, and it is they, as key clients, who will ultimately evaluate the effectiveness of the reform in enabling them to hire top-quality staff more quickly.
Ban, C. ( 2008a) ‘Performance Appraisal and Promotion in the European Commission: the Challenge of Linking Organizational and Individual Accountability’ , paper prepared for the conference on Accountability and Governance in International Organizations, University of Konstanz, June. Available at http:/carolynban.net .
2.
Ban, C. ( 2008b) ‘The Making of the New Eurocrats: Self-selection, Selection, and Socialization of European Commission Staff from the New Member States,’ paper prepared for the conference on l’Europe: Objet, agent et enjeu de socialisation, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Lettres et Sciences Humaines, Lyon, France, October. Available at http:/carolynban,net.
3.
Bauer, M. ( 2008) ‘Diffuse Anxieties, Deprived Entrepreneurs: Commission Reform and Middle Management’, Journal of European Public Policy (15)5: 691-707.
4.
Bellier, I. ( 2000) ‘A Europeanized Elite? An Anthropology of European Commission Officials’, Yearbook of European Studies14 : 135-56.
5.
Bourdieu, P. ( 1989) La Noblesse d’État; Grandes écoles et esprit de corps. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit.
6.
DiMaggio, P. and Powell, W. ( 1983) ‘The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields’, American Sociological Review48(2): 147-60.
7.
Egeberg, M. (ed.) (2006) Multi-level Union Administration: The Transformation of Executive Politics in Europe. Basingstoke and New York : Palgrave Macmillan.
8.
EPSO (European Personnel Selection Office) ( 2008a) EPSO Development Programme: Roadmap for Implementation . September. Brussels: EPSO.
9.
EPSO (European Personnel Selection Office) ( 2008b) ‘Good news for future jobseekers: the European Personnel Selection Office adopts major improvements to its selection methods’ . Press release EPSO/08091, 18 July. Brussels: EPSO.
European Commission (2004) Fourth Action Programme for Equal Opportunities for Women and Men. Brussels: DG Administration.
12.
Gravier, M. ( 2008) ‘The 2004 Enlargement Staff Policy of the European Commission: The Case for Representative Bureaucracy’, Journal of Common Market Studies46(5): 1025-47.
13.
Harty, S. ( 2005) ‘Theorizing Institutional Change’, in A. Lecours (ed.) New Institutionalism: Theory and Analysis, pp. 51-79. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
14.
Haviland, W., Prins, H., Walrath, D. and McBride, B. ( 2008) Anthropology: The Human Challenge, 12th edn. Belmont, CA: Thompson Higher Education.
15.
Hondeghem, A. ( 2002) ‘Competency Management: The State of the Art in the Public Sector?’, in S. Horton, A. Hondeghem and D. Farnham (eds) Competency Management in the Public Sector: European Variations on a Theme, pp. 185-94. Amsterdam: IOS Press.
16.
Immergut, E. ( 2006) ‘Institutional Constraints on Policy’, in M. Moran, M. Rein and R. Goodin (eds) Oxford Handbook of Public Policy, pp. 557-71. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
17.
Kassim, H. ( 2008) ‘ "Mission Impossible", but Mission Accomplished: The Kinnock Reforms and theEuropean Commission’, Journal of European Public Policy15(5): 648-68.
18.
Kingdon, J. ( 1995) Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policy, 2nd edn. New York: HarperCollins.
19.
Knill, C. and Balint, T. ( 2008) ‘Explaining Variation in Organizational Change: The Reform of Human Resource Management in the European Commission and the OECD’, Journal of European Public Policy15(5): 669-90.
20.
Lodge, M. and Hood, C. ( 2005) ‘Competency and Higher Civil Servants’, Public Administration83(4): 779-87.
21.
McCormick, John ( 2008) Understanding the European Union: a Concise Introduction , 4th edn. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
22.
Mangenot, M. ( 2009) ‘D’ou vient la fonction publique communautaire? Les origines d’un modèle (1952-1968)’ in La fonction publique européenne, pp. 23-32. Strasbourg: L’École nationale d’Administration.
23.
Pollitt, C. and Bouckaert, G. ( 2004) Public Management Reform: A Comparative Analysis, 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
24.
Research voor Beleid (2006) Evaluation of the EUR10 Selection and Recruitment Policy, Final Report, project number B3077. Leiden: Research voor Beleid.
25.
Salgado, J., Viswesvaran, C. and Ones, D. ( 2001) ‘Predictors Used for Personnel Selection: An Overview of Constructs, Methods and Techniques’, in N. Anderson, D. Ones, H.K. Sinangil and C. Viswesvaran (eds) Handbook of Industrial, Work and Organizational Psychology, vol. 1., pp. 165-99. London : Sage.
26.
Schmidt, F. ( 1998) ‘The Validity and Utility of Selection Methods in Personnel Psychology: Practical and Theoretical Implications of 85 Years of Research Findings’, Psychological Bulletin124(2): 262-74.
27.
Schön-Quinlivan, A. ( 2007) ‘Administrative Reform in the European Commission: From Rhetoric to Relegitimization’, in M. Bauer and C. Knill (eds) Management Reforms in International Organizations, pp. 25-36. Baden-Baden : Nomos.
28.
Spence, D. and Stevens, A. ( 2006) ‘Staff and Personnel Policy in the European Commission’ , in D. Spence (ed.) The European Commission, 3rd edn, pp. 173-208. London : John Harper Publishing.
29.
Stevens, A. and Stevens, H. ( 2001) Brussels Bureaucrats? The Administration of the European Union. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
30.
Stevens, H. and Stevens, A. ( 2006) ‘The Internal Reform of the Commission’, in D. Spence and G. Edwards (eds) The European Commission, 3rd edn, pp. 454-80. London: John Harper Publishing.
31.
Tömmel, I. and Verdun, A. (eds) (2009) Innovative Governance in the European Union: The Politics of Multilevel Policy-making in the European Union . Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.
32.
Truss, C. ( 2009) ‘Changing HR Functional Forms in the UK Public Sector’ , International Journal of Human Resource Management20(4): 717-37.
33.
US Merit Systems Protection Board (2006) Reforming Federal Hiring: Beyond Faster and Cheaper. Washington, DC: USMSPB.
34.
Van-Biesen, G. ( 2006) ‘Overview of Civil Service Selection Procedures in EU Context’, paper presented at seminar on Civil Service Recruitment Procedures, Vilnius, March; http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/52/39/36762418.pdf (accessed 10 July 2008).
35.
Wildavsky, A. and Pressman, J. ( 1983) Implementation. Berkeley: University of California Press.
36.
Ziller, J. ( 1988) Egalité et mérite: l’Accès à la fonction publique dans les Etats de la Communauté européenne . Bruxelles: Établissements Emile Bruylant.
