CONTRACT AGENT RECLASSIFICATION EXERCISE – 2007

In 2007 the Commission is carrying out an evaluation and reclassification exercise for its contract agents for the first time. Only 3a type contract agents (known 3bis in French) can be reclassified. This means contract agents in function group I in all Commission services, and contract agents in function groups II, III and IV in Commission Offices, Representations and Delegations.

In addition to being a 3a type contract agent, the other eligibility criteria are as follows:

• You must have been employed as a 3a contract agent on 1 May 2005 or before
• You must have been in the same grade for a minimum of 2 years
• You must have a contract of at least 3 years in total duration.

Reclassification
The list – by grade - of contract agents to be reclassified can be found in the tables in annex . If you are not sure of your current grade, you can look on your contract of employment or consult your human resources department.

"Reclassification" means being classified at the first step of the next highest grade in your current function group.

Reclassifications will be retroactive on a date between 1 March 2007 and 1 May 2007 depending on the date upon which each contract agent became eligible for reclassification.

Reclassification Criteria
The results of the evaluation process demonstrate that the overall appreciation attributed to contract agents varies from one service to another. In order to take account of this variation, a harmonising factor was calculated to reduce the differences amongst services. This harmonising factor was corrected according to the number of contract agents in each grade in each service. This approach produced several merit classes for each grade in the contract agent system.

In order to distinguish between contract agents who were considered as being of equal merit, a subsidiary criterion of length of experience was used. As an indication, the average length of experience for each grade is listed below:

As this reclassification exercise is based on merit, the overall appreciations of (a) exceptional, (b) very good and (c) good are considered. Contract agents who received an overall appreciation between satisfactory (d) and unsatisfactory (f) will not be reclassified in 2007.

Appeals

Article 10 of the General Provisions for implementing Article 87 (3) of the Conditions of Employment of Other Servants (CEOS), states that any member of contract staff who meets the criteria of Article 7(2) may launch an appeal to the Joint Reclassification Committee within five working days of being informed of the preliminary decision of the Authority responsible for concluding contracts of employment on the contract staff to be reclassified in 2007. This appeal may be against the evaluation, against the proposal or against both.

Therefore, any member of contract staff employed by the Commission under article 3a of the CEOS who meets the eligibility criteria for the reclassification exercise may launch an appeal to the Joint Reclassification Committee against the evaluation, against the proposal or against both.

For more information on how to launch an appeal, click on the following link.
http://www.cc.cec/pers_admin/ext_staff/contract_agents/index_en.html