EUROPE: Tempus staff to be retrenched

Up to 10 European Commission staff members working on the Tempus programme, which promotes cooperation between higher education establishments within the European Union and with 26 other countries, face the sack following a drastic reorganisation of the project.

Tempus employs about 23 people in Turin and had been administered until now from the European Training Foundation in the Italian city. But University World News was told of the dramatic changes by Denis Crowley, assistant to the Director-General for Education and Culture.

“In line with the general policy adopted for other programmes and cooperation schemes in the area of education and training,” Crowley said, “the Commission intends to entrust management of the fourth phase of the Tempus programme [over the next six years] to the Executive Agency for Education, Audiovisual and Culture, which is based here in Brussels”.

The Tempus programme funds cooperation projects in the areas of curriculum development and innovation, teacher training, university management, and structural reforms in higher education – with special emphasis on the mobility of academic and administrative staff from higher education institutions.

Some of the 23 Tempus staff will be retained on other projects, some are contract staff coming to end of their contracts and probably around 10 will be made redundant. The move has been on the cards for some time but had been postponed until now.

Peter Kempen, secretary-general of the European Commission’s staff union, the Union Syndicale Federale des Service Publics Europeen (USF), said Tempus was not being shut down but was being transferred to Brussels.

“The commission is probably going to outsource all or part of its work to private companies,” Kempen said. He said it looked as though at least eight people who had worked for Tempus for 13 years and given excellent service would be sacked. This was “quite unfair” and the USF would raise the matter with commission president Jose Manuel Barroso.

Kempen said a recent ruling by the European Court of Justice on EU staff cases stipulated that a shift or reorganisation of a programme was not sufficient justification for sacking people.

“In this case I don’t think the standards have been met because Tempus still exists, it’s not shut down, and so beyond the ethical problem, the Barroso commission has a legal problem as well,” he said.