Brussels, 13 March 2003

OPEN LETTER

to Mr de Boissieu, Deputy Secretary-General of the Council of the European Union

Subject: Reform and negotiations on working hours

As a responsible trade union, the FFPE is obliged to state that this is not the time to discuss the question of working hours. The circumstances and the subject do not lend themselves to any such discussion.

European officials are today faced with the most serious crisis in their history – and they are alone, against the Institutions and an ideology that is attempting to weaken all forms of public service. Even their most essential rights are under threat: their pensions. At the General Secretariat, they gave an overwhelming response to the call from the OSPs, by signing the petition that was handed to the Presidency only today.

Staff expected to be supported by its AIPN, they expected it to intervene in negotiations and defend the future of its officials in the Secretariat, in line with the solemn commitment that you made to them in your first speech. And now – instead of that keenly awaited gesture – the AIPN has taken up an inactive dossier, made it urgent and wants to force the Staff and the OSPs to accept it.

The AIPN must have known that this dossier would divide the Staff and divert its attention from the infinitely more important dossier of reform and the calling into question of our Staff Regulations. Some people are starting to believe that this was done deliberately and that this form of behaviour was imposed on the AIPN by the Council in order to sow discord within the Staff and nurture distrust of the OSPs.

Does the treatment inflicted on D and C officials foreshadow – is it the beginning of – the fate that the "reform" and certain delegations wish to inflict on them at all costs?

Now is the time for the AIPN to prove its good intentions!

It must spell out its position on the Reform dossier (in particular the danger of unlimited outsourcing of jobs held by officials).

It must postpone the dossier on working hours until a more appropriate moment.

The FFPE-Council Committee

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