Mr. Barroso, be fair to the East
The Commission is transparent enough to make obvious the huge East-West gap in the EU administration highest posts’ distribution.
The data are appalling.
At the highest level of the administration, AD16, there are 37 civil servants from across the EU, of which zero East Europeans. At the next level AD15, there are 235 civil servants, from which only four are from the East – three from Hungary and one from Slovakia.
At the next level AD 14, out of 431 civil servants, there are 33 East Europeans. Follows the category A13, where from a total of 538 civil servants, there are only three East Europeans.
The situation looks bad also in the AD12 category, with only 65 East Europeans, out of a total of 2.854.
To cut it short, overall, in the five top categories, Eastern Europeans hold 105 posts, out of a total of 4.095. According to the countries populations, they should hold roughly 1.000.
More details are available here.
There is no need to argue further that Eastern Europe is underrepresented at top positions. Mr. Barroso needs to counter-balance this situation, which is expected to persist for the next few years. Certainly not by attributing to the East Europeans portfolios such as ‘multilingualism’, as he did last time.
Georgi Gotev is senior editor of EurActiv