Remonstration in accordance with Article 21 Paragraph 3 of the Statute of Officials

For the Attention of the Head of Unit .................,

Article 21, Paragraph 3 obliges me to inform you when I consider one of your decisions to be erroneous. In my view the current CDR procedure contains a number of violations of the Statute of Officials and of other principles of law recognized by established jurisprudence. These violations are serious enough to put the legality of the CDR in doubt. Here is a list of objections to the legality of the CDR, the associated promotion procedure and the implementing decisions taken by the Commission on 26.04.2004.
Several Articles and principles of settled jurisprudence are being violated by the CDR process:
Article 24 the lack of consideration to continued training in the promotion procedure;
Article 25 with a view to the lack of a reasoned justification of the promotion decisions and the anodyne nature of the comments made in support of the evaluation decisions
Article 26 by the lack of written notifications, the inadequate protection of SysPer2, the incompleteness of the written personnel records as well as the existence of parallel personnel records
Article 43 because, in effect, two separate evaluation procedures are operating, with the priority points being distributed in defiance of the minimum standards for an evaluation procedure
Article 45 by the excessive weighting of the informally recognized „merits“ through priority points in comparison with the formal evaluation, the impermissible remote action of earlier evaluations via the accumulated priority points, the consideration given to illegal criteria (seniority, prior recommendations for promotion), the lack of a comprehensive evaluation and selection, the limitation to officials with the minimum period of service, the double consideration given to activities in favour of the institutions, once with merit points and then with priority points
"Equality before the law“ because of the compulsory pre-established averages per DG, the respective weightings of achievement, capabilities and conduct, the discrimination against whistleblowers and their supporters, the discrimination against mobile officials in both the evaluation and the promotion procedure, the disregard of all activities in favour of the institutions, save for the exhaustive list in Annex I of the Implementing Rules of Article 45 (such as whistle blowing and its defense) "Due process of law“ because of the establishment of points prior to the first discussion, because of the hypocritical use of the term "good“ for scores that are below the average, the excessive mass of secondary information supplied (but almost nothing supplied in German), the current negotiations about CDR-reform during the process, the lack of independence and freedom of choice of the Reporting Officer, the role of the Countersigning Officer, plans to evaluate in the absence of objectives and even of interim evaluations; "The appointing authority’s duty to protect officials“ is violated by what has been stated above, as well as, the negative effects on the working climate, motivation and morale.
These ill effects had been experienced in other organisations previously and are confirmed by the Commission’s own opinion poll fort he 2003 exercise.
This list could be expanded and I am at your disposal to discuss details.
In accordance with Article 21 Paragraph 3 I will comply with your instructions to prepare a self-assessment for the CDR, once my objections have been examined, if you should choose to reaffirm your instructions. As an alternative, you may question your superior about the legality of the CDR under Article 21 Paragraph 3.

Regards,

Copies: Head of Unit, Head of Human Resources, Director, Director General, Mr Claude Chêne (DG ADMIN Director General)