Hello Harry!

I see that you have not yet received any reply to your question. I am obviously only speaking on my own behalf and in purely personal and informal capacity. From what I can tell, EPSO as well as the EU institutions in their recruitment of staff

1) have put in place several procedures to avoid conflict of interest and any such attempts of exercising influence;

2) predefine selection criteria which have to be fulfilled for candidates to advance in a competition or be hired at a later stage;

3) involve several people independent from one another at the selection board at EPSO as well as later on in the recruitment process at EU institutions that would make it extremely difficult to exercise influence in favour of one candidate over others;

4) have disciplinary measures including the possibility to suspend an EU official in case of serious misconduct.

To my knowledge, such reports on disciplinary investigations are also publicly available – e.g. https://www.asktheeu.org/en/request/7881/response/26046/attach/5/Activit...  

I try to reply to your specific questions –

1) The fact that the selection board consists of several people and that the selection criteria are strictly predefined and candidates can only advance in a competition, if they fulfil these conditions and score accordingly high is meant to ensure an impartial and objective competition based on merit only. If a Director or DG intended to exercise influence on selection board members, he/she would be reported by board members and subsequently would have to face disciplinary measures. Anyone not reporting such incidents would risk making themselves accomplice. EU officials are required to maintain high standards of ethics and integrity.

Now, you may say – well, but who guarantees that they really act ethically? I will put it very bluntly, a DG or Director or any other staff member would be foolish to jeopardise their own career, relatively high degree of job security, professional reputation and good salary just for interfering in such a competition by e.g., as mentioned in your example, unfairly favouring some MEP’s child.

2) The selection board cannot pass candidates who do not fulfil the selection criteria and score the highest, e.g. in any part of a competition. As I mentioned, there are several people involved in such assessments and steps and all decisions need to be justified, precisely to ensure objectivity and impartiality. Publishing candidates’ names even just for an intermediary round may be a way to increase transparency – however, candidates are entitled to request from EPSO not to publish their names even on the final reserve list. I personally, would have not agreed to have my name published for such an intermediary list of candidates that made it to the next round and could imagine that several other people would likewise not agree to have their names published at such a stage of a competition.

3) If I understand correctly, there are two sub-questions here.

For the first issue on whether someone could just change (some candidate’s) score. No, same logic as for the answers above applies – the number of people involved in such exercises would make it impossible to simply go into the database and change a CBT score. I myself am not involved in an EPSO selection board, but I know from other examples such as for example the so called promotion exercise within the EU institutions (where staff gets promoted based on merit and seniority), that there are access logs that show you every single person that accessed an EU staff member’s appraisal report to fully ensure transparency. I am confident that EPSO has put in place several security measures similar to the example I have mentioned that would not allow to change any candidate’s score in the IT system.

For the second issue on whether EPSO would retrospectively alter the threshold of points needed to make it to the next round. There would be no need for such a step. If you look at current and past EPSO notices of competition, you will notice that usually some parts of the CBT just require a pass-mark (e.g. 5 out of 10) while others are eliminatory, meaning you are required to have the highest points necessary to make it to the next round. The notices of competition are legally binding on EPSO. EPSO would have to officially amend a notice of competition and announce this publicly (because e.g. such a high number of candidates did not even meet the required pass-mark for some components of the CBT). For the CBT components that are eliminatory, there are no pre-defined points or thresholds that need to be reached. As announced in past notices of competition, EPSO would usually invite a pre-defined number of candidates (i.e. up to 10 times the number of candidates sought for the final reserve list). To my knowledge, such a step to amend a notice of competition because of very bad results for CBT components requiring a pass-mark has never been necessary. EPSO has several years/more than a decade of experience in organising competitions. Also, before EPSO, there were competitions from which the EU institutions and EPSO draw their experience in organising competitions. To my knowledge, the test results usually correspond to a normal bell curve.

I hope my post replies to your questions. Please keep in mind that EPSO has announced that the competition will slightly change, i.e. candidates will take all EPSO tests for a competition in one day only. Hence, there will be no intermediary rounds any longer. Yet, candidates’ specific knowledge and written exercise test components would only be assessed, if they passed the CBT part (pre-defined pass-mark per CBT component).