OUR VISION FOR THE FUTURE OF THE ISPRA SITE

19/02/2024 , ,


OUR VISION FOR THE FUTURE OF THE ISPRA SITE

                                                                                 

  Ispra, 19 February 2024    

NOTE TO THE ATTENTION OF COMMISSIONER MS ILIANA IVANOVA

Subject: Our vision for the future of the Ispra site


Dear Ms Ivanova,

We would like to thank you for your visit to the Ispra site in December and for your recognition of our important work, which has been very much appreciated by the staff.

R&D, which is the most representative Trade Union at Ispra (and the leading one within the European Institutions), wishes to elaborate in more detail some proposals for the future of our site, which had been mentioned during your meeting with the Local Staff Committee.

As you could witness yourself, the Ispra site provides a welcoming and productive working environment, with excellent facilities and opportunities. In our opinion, the Ispra site has a huge untapped potential that, if fully exploited, could make it even more important and strategic for the whole Commission.

Ispra is the third largest Commission site, located at the geographical heart of the European Union, and close to major international airports (Milan Malpensa and Linate). The presence of a European School in Varese is also invaluable and is central to the attractiveness of the site.

Ispra is the principal site of the JRC and hosts services of DG HR, PMO and OIB (limited to the management of social services Рcr̬che and garderie, the clubhouse and canteen).

The Ispra site also hosts a very advanced crisis management infrastructure and can provide increased resilience through decentralisation and geo-distribution of vital Commission services, thus guaranteeing business continuity in case of extreme events impeding their normal functioning at other locations.

As you know, the JRC mission is to provide scientific evidence to policy making. In doing so, we collaborate intensely with colleagues from policy DGs. We believe that this collaboration would be strengthened through direct interaction with our partners, by the establishment of local proximity teams (“antennae”) of other DGs at Ispra. This would furthermore strengthen the entire policy making process within the Commission. The fact that the Ispra site has its ownpremises should facilitate the availability of the necessary space and support to colleagues coming to Ispra from other DGs for short – or even long – periods.

The presence of several Commission services at the Ispra site would also facilitate voluntary mobility of staff between different DGs and entities, making it possible to implement, also at Ispra, the recent HR strategy to increase mobility and diversity across the Commission and making it a natural part of career development. This is a shared goal for staff and the Institution, which we fully support.

An enabling factor for the success of our proposal could consist in the creation of a dedicated entity for the management of the conventional (non-nuclear related) infrastructure which is currently managed by the JRC itself. In other words, an office that could eventually take care of the infrastructure of all JRC sites (a possible acronym for this entity could be OIR, i.e., Office Infrastructure Recherche). A new Office would offer a standardised service to all entities presenton the Ispra site, including the new DG proximity teams.

This new infrastructure management of the Ispra site would be aligned with the way it is managed in Luxembourg and Brussels. Indeed, recently DG COMM has transferred out the management of its infrastructure (to OIB) as it was a distraction from its core mission - similarly, the JRC would become fitter and stronger, purely focusing on its role to provide scientific, evidence-based support to EU policies. This could also offer, at no additional cost, more stable employment conditions to Contractual Agents working on infrastructure, whose current contracts with the JRC are limited to 6 years, whereas they could be indeterminate contracts if they were to be concluded with an Office.

We would be enthusiastic to see our site rebranded as an EU Research and Policy Hub, beyond simply being identified with the JRC, and we count on your support to make this vision possible. Of course, we are available to further elaborate our proposal and discuss with you our ideas in the best interest of the Ispra site and the Commission as a whole.

Yours Sincerely,

Cristiano Sebastiani                      Gianfranco Selvagio
President, R&D Brussels                  President, R&D Ispra


Cc: Secretary-General - Ms Ilze Juhansone, Director-General JRC - Mr Stephen Quest

 ARES : Note Commissioner Ivanova_Our vision for the future of Ispra site


LUNCH TIME INFORMATIVE MEETINGS : PENSION RIGHTS / SUPPLEMENTARY HEALTH INSURANCE

31/01/2024 , , ,

 LUNCH TIME INFORMATIVE MEETINGS

R&D Ispra and SEPS Italia invite you to participate in a series of informative meetings focused on two important topics that often lead to requests for guidance.

 

 

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SUPPLEMENTARY HEALTH INSURANCE


Thursday, 22nd February 2024 from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m.

Hybrid Webinar

JRC – Bldg. 36 Room 004 Amphitheatre or join the conference via Teams  

Click here to join the meeting

 The conference will cover several topics among which:

  • Brief explanation on how the JSIS reimbursement works
  • How to assess if such insurance is necessary?
  • Presentation of one of the available insurance policies: HospiSafe selected by Afiliatys

 

The conference will be held in English – You will be able to intervene also in Italian and French.

 

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PENSION RIGHTS
Newcomers / Colleagues close to retirement



Thursday, 1st February 2024 from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m.

 Hybrid Webinar


JRC – Bldg. 36 Room 004 Amphitheatre or join the conference via Teams  

 

The conference will cover several topics among which:

  • Transfer in/Transfer out of pension rights
  • Retirement/Early retirement: How and when to proceed
  • How to use the “calculette” 
  • Accumulation of pension rights Commission/Member States
  • Accessing IT tools after end of service for pensioners

 

The conference will be held in English – You will be able to intervene also in Italian and French.

 

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If you wish more info, you can contact our secretariat by phone: 0332 78 9645 or by e-mail: 
JRC-RD-ISPRA@ec.europa.eu

The Executive Committee of R&D Ispra   
The Coordination Team of SEPS Italia -  seps.italia@gmail.com

 Both meetings serve the purpose of disseminating information and all the official documentation can be accessed on the Myintracomm platform
                   

 

ONLINE TRAINING | CASE STUDY FOR EPSO OPEN COMPETITIONS - 29, 30 JANUARY and 1st FEBRUARY 2024 at 4.30 PM

26/01/2024 ,

 

           TRAINING FOR EPSO OPEN COMPETITIONS 

 - CASE STUDY-

R&D organises online training sessions in English in order to help all our colleagues to prepare themselves in the best possible way for all EU competitions.

R&D offers a series of specialised and targeted courses, best suited to the needs of its members and new members for the Case Study preparatory phase for ongoing EPSO competitions.

SAVE THE DATES!

Monday 29 January 2024 : EPSO/AD/401/22 -> Notice of competition
Thursday 30 January 2024 : EPSO/AD/410/23 -> Notice of competition
Thursday 01 February 2024 : EPSO/AD/411/23 -> Notice of competition


4:30-6:30 P.M. – BRUSSELS TIME

Case Study for EPSO open competitions
Training sessions in ENGLISH


REGISTER:


Our training are FREE for all R&D members and those who wish to join our trade union!
If you are not already a member, you can join by filling out this online form:
R&D ISPRA BECOME A MEMBER

To participate in the sessions, it is mandatory to complete the Google Form below:

  CASE STUDY | EPSO OPEN COMPETITIONS

 Deadline for registration: 29/01/2024 at 9.00 am

Please note that your registration will be confirmed only
 if you register via the link above


LOGIN LINK WILL BE PROVIDED ONCE YOUR REGISTRATION IS CONFIRMED
ON EACH TRAINING DAY BEFORE NOON



ONLINE TRAINING FOR THE EPSO OPEN COMPETITION | PRE-SELECTION TESTS - CBT at 4.30 PM

17/01/2024 , , ,

 

 TRAINING EPSO OPEN COMPETITIONS 

PRE-SELECTION TESTS

 

 
REGISTER: 

Our training are FREE for all R&D members and those who wish to join our trade union!
If you are not already a member, you can join by filling out this online form:

To participate in the sessions, it is mandatory to complete the Google Form below:


 Deadline for registration: 22/01/2024 at 9.00 am

Please note that your registration will be confirmed only
 if you register via the link above

LOGIN LINK WILL BE PROVIDED ONCE YOUR REGISTRATION IS CONFIRMED
ON EACH TRAINING DAY BEFORE NOON

(We will therefore not reply to emails requesting the link before that day)

TRAINING INTERNAL COMPETITIONS AST4, AD8, AD10, AD12 - TALENT SCREENER

05/12/2023 , ,

 


 TRAINING INTERNAL COMPETITIONS

 AST4, AD8, AD10, AD12 

TALENT SCREENER


R&D organises an online training session on TALENT SCREENER in order to optimise the preparation of your application to the above mentioned internal competitions. 

FOR ITS MEMBERS 

COVERING THE TESTS FOR ALL PUBLISHED INTERNAL COMPETITIONS 

(See competition notice)

AST4 internal competition

AD8 internal competition

AD10 internal competition

AD12 internal competition

 

SAVE THE DATE!

Tuesday, 12 December 2023

4:30 - 6:30 P.M. 

(The training session will be held in EN)

REGISTER

To participate in the session, it is mandatory to complete this form : 

Training – Internal Competitions – TALENT SCREENER

 Deadline for registration: 11/12/2023 at 5.30 pm

Please note that your registration will be confirmed only

 if you register via the link above

 LOGIN LINK WILL BE PROVIDED ON TRAINING DAY BEFORE NOON 

If you have any questions, you can contact us at : JRC-RD-ISPRA@ec.europa.eu

All we are saying… is give AST-SCs a chance!

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All we are saying… is give AST-SCs a chance! 




There is no doubt that AST-SC colleagues are constantly being let down by our institution's staff policy and this is no longer acceptable! 

Enough is enough! AST-SC colleagues have always been treated as “Children of a lesser God”, by our administration, whether in terms of promotions or opportunities for career advancement through internal competitions. 
 
R&D has always been a vocal opponent of this scandalous practice ( R&D  alongside AST/SC colleagues! – Renouveau & Démocratie (renouveau-democratie.eu), by putting all its skills and efforts at the service of AST SC colleagues and with the help of leading experts in all fields. 

 As the FIRST trade union of European public service, we have always used the best practices also of other institutions to fight the bad practices of the Commission and reject any unreasonable decision of our administration. 

The NON-PROMOTION EXERCISE: a catastrophic three-act saga for AST-SCs! 

First act: “Sorry dear colleague, your performance has been outstanding! We would have proposed you for promotion, but there was not a single quota in our DG for your grade”. 

Every year, around the month of June, the Administration publishes in SYSPER2 the list of colleagues that are proposed by their Directors-General for a promotion to the higher grade. Unfortunately, very few AST-SC colleagues are on this list! 

When most of the AST-SC colleagues meet with their line managers in order to understand why they didn’t get the desired promotion, they always receive a very frustrating reply, confirming the very high quality of their performance without being able to reward them the due to the desperate lack of promotions’ quota (or very limited) in the DG for AST-SCs! And unfortunately for us, this disappointing response is not the typical excuse given often by managers, but absolutely true, because in many DGs the Available quotas are 0 or 1, for all SCs categories together. 

Second act: “An appeal is your only option!” 

Following the non-proposal for a promotion, the DGs and HR correspondents encouraged the outstanding AST-SC colleagues who could not even be considered for promotion due to a lack of quota to go on launching an appeal, while themselves would support the colleagues by sending an exceptional request to the administration in order to increase the SCs’ promotion possibilities. Too good though to be true… 

Third and final (?) act: “Adding insult to injury!!” 

The (NON) promotions exercise is concluded at the beginning of November, where the additional list of successful appeals is added to the list of June. For the 2023 the publication of the proposals for promotion in June and the final published list in November included the following results for the entire Commission: 


A first visual inspection of this table shows that DG-HR reserved just eleven (11) quotas for the promotion of SC colleagues during the appeals phase. In these circumstances, it is clear that despite all its more than admirable efforts, the Joint Promotions Committee has no way of providing a satisfactory response to colleagues' more than legitimate expectations. And, within this “War of the poor”, out of these 11 quotas, nothing was given to SC4s or to SC3s. Just two SC2 colleagues and 9 SC1s. That is why, even the encouragement to appeal, wasn’t but an additional disappointment to the already extremely frustrated colleagues. 

R&D wonders? In the end, is the letter and spirit of article 45 of the Staff Regulation really applied for AST-SCs? 

In fact, when an entire DG is not given any quota for a given grade and it is not possible to get quotas down from higher grades, it means that for our AST-SC colleagues, in these grades and in this specific DG, the Article 45 of the Staff Regulations is not really applied. And while, DG-HR will always find a way to (try to) convince us that the AST-SC promotions “algorithm” respects the Annex I of the staff regulations, the truth is probably far from that. 

Not all algorithms are the same, obviously… 

Worse still, every year it becomes clear that some highly visible AD colleagues, "sitting close to the sun" are promoted with much less seniority in their grade compared to the seniority provided for in Annex IB. 

Internal AST-SCs competitions – 

NOT THE FOURTH ACT of the story but a real opportunity for our colleagues, which we are going to defend! 

However, this file had already got off a very bad start: as soon as the Commission's new policy on internal competitions was announced, R&D  stated that it was incredible that there should be ABSOLUTELY NO provision for the AST-SC! 

The administration's response was that the Staff Regulations did not permit the organisation of such internal competitions. R&D  immediately supported the petition organised by our colleagues in TAO-AFI, members of the Alliance to which we belong, asking for internal competitions to be organised for AST-SC colleagues. 

The immediate consequence of this unacceptable approach was, of course that many AST-SC colleagues left the Commission to join other Institutions that were more responsive to the legitimate demands and expectations of our colleagues. 
 
With the aim of countering the administration’s arguments and proving that they had no basis, R&D  presented the ‘good practices’ that our R&D ’s sections in other institutions had negotiated, namely at the Committee of the Regions, European Council, European Parliament, etc... that had actually organised such internal competitions for AST-SC under the same Staff Regulations. 
 
Better late than never: reason has finally prevailed! 

We are pleased to say that we have won a battle here and that our advocacy has tipped the scales, as the administration has finally announced that an internal competition will be held to allow AST-SC colleagues to access the AST career will be published before the end of 2023. 
 
However, R&D  deeply regrets to see the departure of highly qualified AST-SC colleagues as a result of the administration's refusal to accept immediately the legitimate requests to rectify this injustice. 
 
FACTA NON VERBA! 

Making big announcements is no longer enough! Action must be taken. And it's not enough just to act; it's all about doing the right things. 

Thus, finally announcing that these internal competitions will be organised for AST-SCs is not enough. 

These internal competitions must finally meet our colleagues' AST-SC more than legitimate expectations concerning: 

- how many posts will be on the reserve list, 
- the grades of access,
- the frequency of their organisation. 
 
R&D  will ensure that all these requirements be duly taken into account in the internal competitions organised for AST-SC. 

Enough of a piecemeal strategy! 

R&D  calls on the Commission to meet our demands and the expectations of our AST-SC colleagues by offering them real career development, while at the same time repairing the damage caused by delays in their careers for which the Commission alone is responsible. 

Cristiano Sebastiani, 
President

ONLINE TRAININGS - CASE STUDY FOR EPSO OPEN COMPETITIONS - 27 & 30 NOVEMBER _ 05 & 07 DECEMBER 2023 - at 4.30 PM

21/11/2023 , , ,

                                                                                                         

TRAINING FOR EPSO OPEN COMPETITIONS

- CASE STUDY -


R&D  organises online training sessions in order to help all our colleagues to prepare themselves in the best possible way for all EU competitions.

R&D offers a series of specialised and targeted courses, best suited to the needs of its members and new members. Different time slots are provided for the Case Study preparatory phases.

SAVE THE DATES!

 Monday 27 November 2023

Thursday 30 November 2023

Tuesday 05 December 2023

Thursday 07 December 2023

4:30-6:30 P.M.


Assessment Centre/Case Study for EPSO open competitions
 

Online training sessions in ENGLISH


Date                Time                    Training                        Trainer 

27/11/2023    16:30 - 18:30    Case Study - session 1     Ruth Harland

30/11/2023    16:30 - 18:30    Case Study – session 2     Ruth Harland

05/12/2023     16:30 - 18:30    Case Study - session 1     Ruth Harland

07/12/2023     16:30 - 18:30    Case Study - session 2     Ruth Harland

REGISTER:

Our training are FREE for R&D members and those who wish to join our trade union!
R&D ISPRA BECOME A MEMBER

To participate in the sessions it is mandatory to become a member of our trade union and fill in the Google Form below: 
CASE STUDY FOR EPSO OPEN COMPETITIONS
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Deadline for registration for November sessions : 24/11/2023 at 5.30 am

Deadline for registration for December sessions : 04/12/2023 at 5.30 pm


Please note that your registration will be confirmed only
 if you register via the link above

LOGIN LINK WILL BE PROVIDED ONCE YOUR REGISTRATION IS CONFIRMED on EACH TRAINING DAY BEFORE NOON (we will therefore not reply to emails requesting the link before that day).


If you have any questions, you can contact us at : JRC-RD-ISPRA@ec.europa.eu

We look forward to meeting you.

Renouveau&Démocratie Ispra

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