I was just reading "The European Comission: A Practical Guide", which I bought since it is recommended in The Ultimate EU Test Book (another book I bought after thinking very thoroughly whether I would be able to make it to a permanent job at the EU) and came across some pretty disturbing news which I immediatly googled. A 5% reduction in workforce throughout all EU institutions has been implemented up until the year 2020.
Now I´m wondering... Why does EPSO even publish competitions? I understand there might be some very specific posts that might need to be covered, but AD and AST Generalist vacancies can surely be covered by the staff already working at the EU...
This 5 % cut will almost exclusively be achieved by not replacing permanent officials after they retire, i.e. by scrapping the post entirely.
There are currently 2149 permanent officials in the age bracket 59-66 working in the Commission alone, representing 9,1 % of the total number of permanent officials. Most, if not all of them, are sure to retire by 2020. If only four out of ten of them are replaced after they leave, that still means that there will be over 800 new permanent officials needed by 2020.
You can already see how the cuts have affected EPSO's planning; just take a look at the number of laureates foreseen for the annual AD generalists competitions recently.
2012 (AD 5 and AD 7 combined): 296
2014 (AD 5 only, no AD 7 generalist competition organized): 137
2015 (AD 5 only, no plans so far to organize AD 7 generalist competition): 149