ECB staff are up in arms again over ‘rigged’ recruitment processes

The European Central Bank’s long-standing problem with favoritism has flared up again, and allegations of rigged hiring processes have brought relations between management and staff representatives to boiling point.

The bank’s staff committee and HR department have been slugging it out in a reply-all email war, after the former levelled accusations of bias in two internal hiring processes. The bank denies any wrongdoing.

Favoritism is a chronic issue at the ECB: in a recent staff committee survey over 70 percent of respondents complained about it, and trust in the appeals procedure for regulating disputes is low.

POLITICO spoke to five people and reviewed dozens of documents relating to two contentious hiring processes, both of which took place earlier this year: one for an adviser position in the directorate general of market operations and the other involving multiple supervisory roles in the directorate overseeing on-site inspections of banks. Staff representatives accuse management of twisting selection criteria after the process had been completed, to favor preferred candidates. 

“At the ECB … corrupted recruitment campaigns seem to be a standard practice,” the committee  lashed out in an email to all staff on  Nov. 18, seen by POLITICO.

The ECB disputes this. In addressing the complaints, Eva Murciano, head of human resources, called the accusations baseless and said that in both instances her team found no wrongdoing.

The great switcheroo

Recruitment campaigns at the ECB involve several steps before a select few advance to a final round, which includes an hourlong interview. Once the process is completed, a hiring panel, generally consisting of three members, ranks the candidates based on a pre-agreed scoring framework for each question. 

In the case of the supervisory jobs, where the process was only open to internal applicants and was completed by the end of April, the staff committee alleges candidates were informed after the last round — without any further explanation — that the results would be delayed until early June.  Around May 20, the hiring panel then began circulating results unofficially among department managers.

At the ECB, hiring managers typically contact successful candidates when the results are still unofficial to make sure they’re still interested in the open position. At the same time, other managers whose protégés have been unsuccessful begin horse-trading with the panel to secure places on the reserve list, three people familiar with the ECB’s procedures told POLITICO. The reserve list allows the ECB to fill similar job openings later without a new recruitment process.

According to the complaint, the hiring panel changed the weights assigned to the various interview questions after already circulating its provisional judgments. More weight was given to behavioral questions, where the scope for interpretation is greater, while the weights for technical questions, where interpretation is minimal, were reduced.

As a result, some candidates who had been informally congratulated by their managers were ultimately left disappointed, not even making the reserve list, according to the staff committee.

In a reply-all response, Murciano said her department conducted a thorough investigation and “could not find any evidence of the allegations brought forward by the Staff Committee.”

She stressed that the ECB’s recruitment practices have plenty of checks and balances and allow unsuccessful candidates to challenge the result of a selection process. 

Pressure from above

Like every EU institution, the ECB has a constant struggle to reconcile two important principles. On the one hand, the law requires it to hire on merit, and requires all of its employees to act in the common interest. On the other, there is an implicit imperative for staff to reflect the EU’s self-image as an equal partnership of nations, and to safeguard against key staff pursuing national interests.  The ECB has had a particular problem with “national clusters” but, even without conscious bias, the risk is that any position, at any time, can be filled by a less-than-ideal candidate. 

Several weeks after the first complaint, the staff committee sent another email alleging more irregularities in another hiring process, this time for the position of adviser in the ECB’s market operations department.

Members of the interview panel complained about pressure applied by a senior manager in favor of a specific candidate.

“Pressure was made on the recruitment panel to propose the nomination of a different candidate than the one who came as the best fit,” a second email from staff reps said. “That the interferences come from a Senior Manager is an aggravating circumstance, not an extenuating one.”

The panel stood firm and went on to select someone else. 

After that, according to the committee, the vacancy was withdrawn and the department restructured, as the frustrated manager intervened to thwart the panel’s decision.

Again Murciano replied, calling the complaint “unfounded” and “deeply regrettable.” 

She explained that the ECB’s Executive Board approved the restructuring on Sept. 17 and the decision was communicated to the five candidates shortly afterward.

POLITICO understands that applications for the job closed in May and that the final interviews had taken place in June.

Murciano’s answer prompted a new complaint by the staff committee, this time for refusing to investigate. “In less than 24 hours, the Head of HR decided to declare that everything was fine,” it told staff.

The ECB said it had no further comment to make on either hiring process.

The scourge of direct appointments

More broadly, another key area of concern among staff has been the use of so-called direct appointments, which allow senior managers to give temporary contracts lasting up to a year to any person, inside or outside the bank, at their discretion. 

“They could take anyone from the street and appoint them to whatever position,” a staff member complained.

This practice has led to widespread criticism. Just in the business areas reporting to the chief services officer, which include finance, administrative services and security, there have been at least four formal complaints since 2022, three of them this year alone.

The complaints have asserted that such appointments almost always lead to the beneficiary later getting a permanent contract through an internal recruitment campaign tailored to their personal profile.  Staff grumble that this essentially skews the playing field against them. 

In an email to a member of staff, HR admitted tailoring some internal hiring campaigns, but justified it on the basis of business continuity. 

“Requirements may well evolve over time, even where the title of the position remains the same,” they wrote.  “The adjusted requirements obviously also reflect back on the requirements an appointee ad interim needs to meet.”

(CORRECTION: an earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the share of survey respondents complaining about favoritism.)