NOTHING IS FIXED, ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN! WE STILL NEED YOU! Dear colleagues, You have been informed by VP Šefčovič that the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission have reached a political agreement on the changes in the Staff Regulations. Don’t rejoice too quickly: the devil is in the details, and we weren’t given any, even though the Vice-President gave some indications. The text must be finalized before another trialogue meeting on 25 June, where the agreement should be confirmed before being presented to the three Institutions for final approval. What will happen before the last trialogue meeting? Many things can happen – negative for staff. The COREPER might not be satisfied. During the meeting of the Council’s “Commission de Consultation” on Thursday, the Irish Ambassador confirmed this possibility. It is also possible that the Parliament could table additional last-minute amendments. Lots of things – negative for the staff- can happen. Mr Šefčovič said, all parties had to make concessions. Let’s not forget that concessions are always made in the same direction : at the expense of staff and with the goal of making our European Civil Service “less costly” for Member States but most of all, less attractive and less efficient. Many subjects were discussed, which were not included in the Commission’ proposal. This wasn’t an accident! As the Joint Trade Union Front had foreseen, this is the result of a the initial proposal hastily presented by the Commission which, rather than limiting itself to defining a new « method » and looking for possible savings in other sectors, opened all the chapters of our Staff Regulations, which allowed the Council to continue to work on them…and despite our efforts it has not been possible to stop this process. This is how, in addition to the disgraceful measures to block the careers of AST staff envisaged by the Commission, there has been a similar measure to block AD careers, limit the holidays for travelling time and reduce the annual leave of colleagues in Delegations by 18 days. Curiously, these details were omitted from the message and there is no reference to the proposal being “de-natured”. The Commissioner boasts of an agreement. If at this stage we can still hope to avoid the worst it is above all due to your efforts at mobilization, to the support which you have always given to your representatives and to your massive participation in the actions which we launched, including the strike fund, the petition…. Our task was complicated by the fact that your representatives were deliberately kept out of negotiations and in lieu of social dialogue, there as a monologue and a hide-and-seek game, of influence-mongering and outrageous personalization of the file. A strange conception of social dialogue…which makes us fear the worst for the implementation of the reform. In order to decode the obscure and mysterious negotiation process that is going on, and to be able to give you precise information, we demanded to receive immediately the text of the political agreement and have another meeting to discuss it. We had the promise to receive a document by Monday 24 June, but any further meeting was refused. In the meantime the Vice-President has proposed a « session of understanding how to read » the agreement in order for it to be presented to staff as being the « opinion of the Staff Representatives ».. Nothing is fixed, anything can happen! We still need you! Let’s remain mobilized; the next few days will be crucial. We have to keep fighting to get the answers to our legitimate questions. We have to maintain the pressure on the Institutions to ensure that staff is informed and its opinion taken into consideration, to give its representatives the opportunity to defend staff interests within the framework of a real negotiation. Based on the resolution of the General Assembly of 19 June, trade-unions have presented a strike notice for several days: we must use this means to be heard! According to developments, we will confirm the days of strike one after the other. In the meantime, we invite you to a new General Assembly on Tuesday 25 June, at 13 :00, in the Berlaymont to co-ordinate our actions with our colleagues in the other Institutions with a view to a strike on 26th June.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 12:40:22 +0000