{"id":37,"date":"2016-10-26T15:44:30","date_gmt":"2016-10-26T13:44:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ipso.de\/wordpress\/?p=37"},"modified":"2019-06-14T16:10:53","modified_gmt":"2019-06-14T14:10:53","slug":"econ-hearing-on-ecb-governance-and-staffing-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ipso.de\/wordpress\/2016\/10\/26\/econ-hearing-on-ecb-governance-and-staffing-issues\/","title":{"rendered":"ECON hearing on ECB governance and staffing issues"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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left to right: ECON chairman R. Gualtieri, Ipso President J. Priesemann, Staff committee spokes person C. Bowles<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\nUpon IPSO\u00b4s initiative, the ECON Committee of the European Parliament \norganized a hearing on HR matters at the European Central Bank (ECB) \nwhich took place on 26 October 2016. See here the video<\/a><\/strong> of the hearing on the European Parliament\u2019s website.

The\n hearing was split in two separate sessions, one with ECB management, \nrepresented by the ECB\u2019s Chief Services Officer Michael Diemer and the \nDirector General of the ECB\u2019s HR function Anne-Sylvie Catherin and \nanother one with staff and union representatives Carlos Bowles (Staff \nCommittee) and Johannes Priesemann (IPSO).

Staff and Union \nRepresentatives insisted on the constitutional anomaly that the ECB acts\n as the employer and legislator at the same time. They flagged the \nresulting large imbalance of powers at the European Central Bank and the\n excessive interpretation of independence. They flagged operational \nrisks deriving from the precarious contracts, the role of personal ties \nin appointments and promotions and excessive workload. They called for \nintensified parliamentary scrutiny, full transparency of the law-making \nmaterials in ECB\u2019s own labour law setting and the adoption of good \npractices as regards staff participation in decision-making (see the \nintroductory statements attached from Johannes Priesemann and Carlos \nBowles) and requested the recruitment of long-serving temporary agency \nstaff rather than the outsourcing of the work to external service \nproviders.
Parliamentarians, on their part, questioned the ECB \nmanagers about the ECB\u2019s decision to adopt the staff rules different to \nthose of other EU institutions, the lack of staff participation \nmechanisms for the ECB as a European Institution, the generalized use of\n temporary contracts for permanent tasks, and the ECB\u00b4s cherry-picking \napplication of the German legislation regarding the use of temporary \nagency staff. Staff and Union Representatives, and in their view also \nthe members of Parliament, so far, were not convinced by the ECB\u2019s \nanswers to these questions.
The MEPs present agreed on the need to \nfollow up on these issues and are working on a possible way forward to \nintensify the European Parliaments scrutiny in these matters.

The ECB Representatives\u2019 presentation can be seen in the video linked above.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n