1. Court of Justice: geographical balance missed
Understanding before taking action
Court of Justice: geographical balance missed
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2. The Commission submitted to the European Parliament and the Council a report on the implementation of the principle of geographical balance.
From the outset, the Commission makes it clear that, “having regard to the underlying objective of the report, the analysis concerning the Commission will focus on the AD function group.”
EPSU CJ : This restrictive approach to the principle of geographical balance is very worrying. It means that the effort to restore the attractiveness of the EU as an employer is largely abandoned.
Indeed, as shown in our analysis dating from 2011, the lower the pay, the sharper the geographical imbalance.
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3. A balance should be struck between:
the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of nationality
and
recruitment on the broadest possible geographical basis
Staff Regulations of Officials, Article 27
Recruitment shall be directed to securing for the institution the services of officials of the highest standard of ability, efficiency and integrity, recruited on the broadest possible geographical basis from among nationals of Member States of the Union. […]
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4. The same rule also applies to other servants:
Conditions of Employment of Other Servants, Article 12 (1)
The engagement of temporary staff shall be directed to securing for the institution the services of persons of the highest standard of ability, efficiency and integrity, recruited on the broadest possible geographical basis from among nationals of Member States of the Union.. […]
Conditions of Employment of Other Servants, Article 82 (1)
Contract staff shall be selected on the broadest possible geographical basis from among nationals of Member States, […]
 Remarquably, Article 82(1) CEOS is not even mentioned in the Commission report.
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5. The position of the Court of Justice can be summarised as follows :
Methodology and criteria for assessing geographical balance
Geographical balance is assessed at aggregate level (all function groups together).
Benchmark: the share of the relevant Member State population in the EU population.
2. Observed (significant) imbalance by Member State
Under-represented: UK
Over-represented: FR, BE
3. Objective justification of the imbalance
All imbalances are objectively justified by
·FR, BE: the Court works in French (mitigated by extensive language courses programme).
·UK: Difficulty to recruit UK nationals.
EPSU CJ comments:
Unlike the Commission’s criteria, those of the Court sound right. 
The finding is insufficient: Other Member States are also under-represented.
If a blatant imbalance is attributable to the language regime, then the latter has to be rethought.
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6. To better understand the causes of the imbalance,
we have broken down the staff of the institution in three broad sectors which have different characteristics. 
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7. First sector : Members’ Chambers
The pivotal working language of the judicial activity is French;
Each Member (Judge, Advocate- General) is free to compose his/her Chambers as he/she wishes. Members generally prefer native French-speaking legal secretaries (most often FR or BE), whereas other lawyers can be equally operational in French. Same applies to assistants.
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8. First sector : Members’ Chambers (continued)
Members’ Chambers are the main source of geographical imbalance in the Institution.
EPSU CJ: The Institution should raise Members’ awareness on the issue of geographical balance.
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9. Second sector: Multilingualism
Here the picture changes significantly: for each official language of the Union a language section has to be formed.
In most cases one language corresponds to a nationality. The fact therefore that the nationalities of smaller Member States are over- represented is justified.
However, countries that share an official language with another country (CY, AT) are under-represented, and so are NL for the benefit of BE, due to the fact that Belgian Flemings are more familiar with FR language.
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10. Second sector: Multilingualism (continued)
Without multilingualism, geographical imbalance of the Court would have been even more serious.
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11. Third sector: Other Services
French is not only the working language of the proceedings in court, but also, almost exclusively, the language of administration. The Court of Justice is the most French- speaking EU-institution.
The profound imbalance observed in Chambers (1st sector) also occurs, to a lesser extent, in the ‘Other Services’.
It further seems that there is a correlation between the career prospects and the level of knowledge of French.
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12. Third sector: Other Services (continued)
In this part of the Institution, rebalancing measures must be taken, along with establishing English as a second language of the administration.
Admittedly, in requiring the ability to work in three official languages the Staff Regulations (Article 45 (1)) do not specify in which.
But, as in other institutions, one can reasonably expect staff members to be operational in EN and FR to the extent necessary for the performance of their duties.
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13. the main nationalities of immigrants: PT, FR, IT, BE and
3a contract staff
Due to the very low level of pay, recruitment is essentially local. For Luxembourg, this practically involves:
the main nationalities of immigrants: PT, FR, IT, BE
and
Cross-border workers from FR et BE.
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14. Court of Justice: an overall assessment
Given that the salaries offered by the EU institutions are not particularly attractive for LU,
where the labour market is largely made up of immigrants and cross-border workers,
combined with the fact that LU does not add any EU official language to the existing ones,
the “seat effect” for LU nationals is weak.
However, the “seat effect” accounts for part of the over-representation of FR and BE nationalities.
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15. Court of Justice: aggregate level
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16. Court of Justice: Management posts
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17. Court of Justice: an overall assessment
BE and FR are over-represented due to the use of French as:
the working language of the judicial activity and
the language used almost exclusively in administrative practice.
In addition to the UK, which has traditionally been under-represented and is now undergoing a traumatic process of withdrawing from the Union, are significantly under-represented: AT, NL, PL, ES, IT; last but not least, DE even though it is a neighbouring country.
 Overall conclusion - It is mainly the language regime centred on French which accounts for chronic and structural geographical imbalance in the Court of Justice.
Understanding before taking action: EPSU CJ, the representative trade union at the Court of Justice, takes an approach which is the opposite of Propaganda : No conclusion set in advance, describing the facts, identifying what goes wrong and what needs to be changed.
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