NETWORK OF NATIONAL CONTACT POINTS AND DATABASE OF JOBS OPEN TO NATIONALS OF THE MEMBER STATES OF THE EU.
The Member States of the European Union, within the framework of the informal co-operation of the Directors General responsible for the Public Administrations, have dedicated their efforts to facilitate the mobility of officials amongst the different Administrations, since the year 1995, when the Mobility Group was created.
Amongst the initiatives proposed within the ambit of this Group to facilitate the mobility of officials between Administrations, on different occasions there has been discussion on, and support for, the possibility of creating a Network of National Contact Points, with the idea that this will lead to the availability of information regarding mobility possibilities within each Administration, and that the Network will serve as a forum for the exchange of information, regarding problems that have arisen and solutions adopted in each State.
I-.DEVELOPMENT OF THE NATIONAL CONTACT POINTS AND THE DATABASE OF JOBS OPEN TO NATIONALS OF OTHER MEMBER STATES DURING THE SUCCESSIVE PRESIDENCIES OF THE UE
The Directors General considered for the first time the possibility of creating a network of National Contact Points during the Austrian Presidency in November of 1998 in Vienna. The Mobility Group presented to the Directors General a report that included various proposals in order to strengthen and facilitate the mobility and exchange of officials amongst the respective Administrations of the Member States.
Amongst the cited proposals, the following were contemplated:
- The establishment of a Permanent Secretariat of the Group in the European Commission (DG IX. A.5) as a central contact point for centralising the information regarding employment possibilities within the Public Administrations of the Member States, and regarding possible detachments within the Commission or the Administrations of the Member States
- The establishment of a National Liaison Point in each Member State with the following functions:
In relation with access to the public service:
Establish BASIC INFORMATION about the respective public services (on paper, in the Internet) with regard to the basic conditions relating to employment and social legislation by the middle and/or possibly the end of 1999.
Supplying information in fundamental matters as far as the acceptance of personnel is concerned.
Referral of prospective candidates to other national, regional and local administrations dealing with personnel administration.
Information on place and form of publications, use of the Internet.
Encouraging respective administrative units in the MS to supply information about employment possibilities and vacancies in an easily accessible form.
The above BASIC INFORMATION should give at least details on:
General information about the public service
Conditions of employment.
Principles and procedures of recruitment.
Requirements of the applicants.
Places of employment
Contact addresses.
Where and in which forms are vacancies published; tips and electronic referrals.
In relation with mobility between the civil services of the MS:
Amending the BASIC INFORMATION to allow for the professional experience and the level of remuneration of the applicants to be taken into account when taking up employment in the host administration.
Possibly reciprocal information from the national contact centres of the two Member States in question.
In relation with detachments and exchanges:
Supply information with regard to fundamental matters as far as exchanges and/or detachments of civil servants are concerned.
Give assistance in the case of detachments, so that one does not have to sort out administrative matters oneself.
Tips for existing EU-wide exchange programmes (e.g. KAROLUS) and bilateral agreements.
With the presentation of this proposal the Directors General were invited to take note and approve the report and decide, consequently, upon the setting up of the National Liaison Point in each MS with the area of responsibility as stated.
Finally, the Minutes of the 31st Meeting of General Directors states that in the debate that followed the presentation of the above mentioned report, the general will of continuing with the anticipated direction was manifested, in particular with the design of the NCP and the establishment of an electronic network, a Database controlled by the Commission.
In the month of July 1999, the DG Admin in the Commission presented to the Group a new report with the following contents:
- The establishment of the Permanent Secretariat (anticipated in the report elaborated during the Austrian Presidency), in the unit of Relationships with the National Administration and the description of its functions in relation with the Job opportunity Data Bank:
-Facilitate and co-ordinate the work of the national contact points, by ensuring the overall consistency of the operation of the network
-Present to the Mobility Group the problems that cannot be resolved within the network and to propose solutions.
-Co-ordinate the reporting of the network activity to the Mobility Group and to the Directors General.
-Seek the most effective means, procedures and information tools- i.e., those which give the best performance in relation to the inputting and maintenance effort- for the Data bank.
-Promote and support, at the European level measures to facilitate the free movement of the agents of the public service officials.
- The National Contact Point of each Member State constitutes the focal information point with respect to the Permanent Secretariat, national contact points of other Member States and candidates to mobility. According to the organisation specific to each Member State, the National Contact Point fulfils its function either as a direct source of information, or as a dispatcher within the national network of contact points in the various Administrations. As this is a new function, the objectives can only be met at the completion of an incremental process.
- With this in mind the National Contact Points will:
-Provide and update on a regular basis data on their country’s public service, in order to supply the page of introduction to the job opportunity data bank, as well as any other general information.
-Provide in a progressive manner and update on a regular basis data on job opportunities in their country’s public administration.
-Check access to modify data on their countrie´s database by suitable information tools.
-Provide to the extent possible the Permanent Secretariat with the data necessary for drawing up annual statistics.
-Promote and support at the national level measures that facilitate the free movement of public service officials
During the Finnish Presidency at the Helsinki Meeting held on the 3rd and 4th of November 1999, a report was presented regarding the actions of the Mobility Group and a visual presentation of the “Mobility” Database set up within the framework of the Commission “Europe” site, that was well received by all. It was noted that the updating of the data was the responsibility of the Member States, since the “Mobility” Database was directly connected, via Internet, to the national sites containing data on the recruitment of public officials.
It was also pointed out that these sites did not necessarily cover all the public positions of each Member State, in so far as the national data suppliers did not always have the authority to cover every sector (national, federal, regional or local for example) of the public service.
In the Minutes of the 34th informal Meeting of Directors General during the Portuguese Presidency there is a mention of the significant progress attained in relation with the information available at the web site “Mobility of the Commission” in Internet.
During the French Presidency, in November 2000, the report from the Mobility Group presented to DG, contained special emphasis on the importance of continuing the progresses in the activation of the Network of N.C.P. and the relaunching of the Database created by the Commission on the web site Europe.
In the Resolution that was adopted it was finally accorded that the Group would activate the Network of N.C.P., to be consulted by the national Administrations regarding the specific difficulties discovered by the candidates for European mobility, and to propose initiatives that makes it possible to resolve the difficulties that arise with the greatest frequency.
Continuing with the mandate found in the previously mentioned Resolution issued on the 9th and 10th of November 2000, the Belgian Presidency remitted to the delegations of the Member States a document inviting them to communicate, the names and other details of two persons of each Member State that will carry out the tasks corresponding to the N.C.P. in each country, and the suggestions that each delegation may have regarding the reestablishment of the N.C.P. (A copy is attached as Annexe 1).
During the meeting of the Mobility Group held on the 25th of October 2001 the role of the NCP was once again debated, with special emphasis by some Delegations on various aspects:
- Due to the practical impossibility for the NCP of attending to the individual demands of candidates to mobility amongst Administrations, they must function as intermediaries, of the especially in strongly decentralised Member States.
- The Commission, when solving the individual claims, must maintain as interlocutors the Permanent Representations.
- In relation with the Database of jobs open to nationals of other Member States, the Commission must create a system of links with the information of the national Administrations and must stablish a deadline to put it into operation.
The representative of the DG Employment thought the working group should find solutions to procedural aspects and showed the desire of having direct contacts with the PNC to exchange information about complaints.
Based on the questionnaire and the contributions of the members of the group to the debate, a series of recommendations were presented to the DG by the Belgian Presidency in Bruges and the tasks of the N.C.P. were reformulated in the Declaration of 26th and 27th November 2001 approved by DG.
In accordance with the Declaration, the tasks of the N.C.P. were established as follows:
- The network of N.C.P. has to constitute a forum of discussion and sharing of experiences on the questions of mobility, composed of experts of the regulations and/or legislation concerning the civil services of the Member States.
- The network is also assigned with the task of answering to requests of the National Administrations of all Member States.
Likewise, the Declaration on occasion of the approval of the exchange system between the European Civil Service and the Civil Services of the Member States, ask the Mobility Group to look further into this item at the time of next Presidency, in particular with regard to, the role that the NCP are able to play in the evaluation of such system of exchange.
At the same meeting the Commission through the DG Admin compromised to prepare now an application regulation of the system to be discussed in the working group.
Moreover, note is taken of the decision of the European Council to create only one integrated jobs opportunity data bank, which implies an active participation of all Member States.
II. - DEVELOPMENT DURING THE SPANISH PRESIDENCY AND CONCLUSIONS.
In the first meeting of the Human Resources Group, held on the 19th of February 2002, when tackling the putting into operation of the Network of N.C.P., the following points have been emphasised:
1)The job opportunity data bank of the Commission is still not operative.
The Commission informed that the project pertaining to the creation of this Database has been integrated within a Project that is much more ambitious, the creation of a Portal for the Administration of the European Union within the framework of the European IDA Programme.
The information regarding the preliminary study for putting into operation a Portal for the Administration of the European Union can be found on the Internet at the site
2)Some Delegations considered necessary that the Directors General should clarify the functions that the N.C.P. must effectively carry out.
In this sense, the Presidency recalled that, although in November of 1998, in Vienna, there was a proposal for it to be put into operation with a broad and detailed catalogue of functions, that was not reflected in the minutes of the 31st meeting of Directors General, and finally in the Bruges Declaration DG have limited the ambit of action of the NCP exclusively to the three functions outlined in point I. of this report.
Nevertheless, the Spanish Presidency following the request of some Delegations asked the Member States for any proposal to extend the functions of the NCP, so that they could be discussed again by the Group and, eventually approved by Directors General in their next meeting in La Rioja in May 2002.
Likewise, it was requested that the Member States complete and update the list of N.C.P. with the information on the Administrative Units responsible as well as the identity of the civil servant that will carry out this function
During the second meeting of the Human Resources Group held in Luxembourg the 23 Th April, the delegation of Germany submitted a proposal for the discussion of the group about the delimitation of tasks assigned to the N.C.P.
In that document it was proposed that the general functions approved in Bruges should be specified in greater detail on the basis of the description of tasks contained in the work schedule of Vienna 1998.
After an open debate in the group there was a general agreement on connecting the Statement of Bruges with the Schedule of Vienna as follows:
- The network of the Points of Contact has to constitute a forum of discussion and sharing of experiences.
- Mutual information between the National Contact Points of Member States, exchange of experience.
- The network is also assigned with the task of answering to requests of the national administrations of all Member States.
- Provide information in all basic issues concerning the exchange of public servants and their secondment.
- Information on place and form of publications, including use of the Internet.
- Referral of the requesting administrations to other national, regional and local points in charge of personnel matters.
- Information on existing EU-wide exchange programmes and bilateral agreements.
- Assistance to other administrations involved in case of detachments, without doing the administrative work oneself.
The access to N.C.P. has been clearly limited to the Public Administrations of the Member States, excluding always the direct access of the citizens, taking into account that otherwise it should be necessary to provide them with a permanent administrative structure that has not been foreseen.
The tasks proposed concerning to the Mobility database, should be discussed in the future once the database operates.
It was also agreed during this meeting that it should be advisable that N.C.P. elaborate and update a list of the web pages of each administration containing useful information on mobility.
In the draft document sent by the Spanish Presidency to the delegations of the Member States before the meeting, it was proposed that once the issue regarding the delimitation of tasks assigned to the National Contact Points is closed, it should be stablished the next semester as the deadline for its entry into operation.
In general that date was considered suitable, but during the debate it appears that it might be necessary to approve procedural rules to guarantee the performance of the network, and to revise its tasks once N.C.P. are functioning.
3)With regards to the third function assigned in Bruges to the N.C.P. relative to the evaluation of the exchange system between the European Civil Service and the Civil Services of the Member States, and with the purpose of beginning the debate about the way to design that evaluation, it was requested that the Commission, inform the group regarding the operation of the system. This information is necessary so as to be able to design an evaluation system.
During the second meeting, the Commission presented to the group a descriptive document on the system.
This document that was presented during the Belgium Presidency in the DGs meeting in Bruges, has been updated to be shown to the group, including on it statistic data about the exchanges of Commission officials that are currently taking place, with information about the nationality and the DG of origin of the officials, and about the countries and Administrations of destination.
The document also foresees as newness the organisation of ad hoc language training courses in order to support its officials in participating in the exchange system and the transmission of the lists of candidates to the Permanent Representations of the Member States as always.
Taking into account that the report regarding the actions of the Mobility Group presented in Bruges by the Belgian Presidencyproposed that the evaluation of the system should be carried out annually and jointly by the Commission and the Member States through the Network of N.C.P, the Spanish Presidency proposed to begin a debate within the Group, regarding the data that the Commission could facilitate to the National Contact Points annually that could serve as indicators for carrying out this evaluation.
The indicators proposed were:
-Number of civil servants of each Member State that have requested participation in the exchange system.
-Number of civil servants of the Commission that have requested participation in the exchange system.
-Number of civil servants that have participated in the exchange system on behalf of the Commission and the National Administrations.
-Duration of the exchanges.
-Effective exchanges carried out taking into account the sectoral areas where they have taken place.
-Number of offers of exchanges by sectoral areas and Administrations.
In general the representatives in the group considered that the indicators proposed seemed to be correct but agreed on postponing the discussion of this subject to a future date once the system of exchanges operates.
The delegation of Portugal has also proposed that the indicators can distinguish the age and the gender of the civil servants involved in the exchanges, and it can be added to the list as another one the time passed between the demand and the assignment to a post in the other administration.