New European officials tested

By Oana Lungescu BBC, Brussels

The first tests to recruit officials from the 10 countries set to join the EU next May began on Thursday.

Over the next two weeks, from Warsaw to Valetta, over 12,000 candidates will take the same exam, at the same time, in the hope of eventually getting one of the 5,000 jobs earmarked for the newcomers.

The EU will need many new interpreters when enlarged in May

Interpreters were the first to take their day-long tests, followed by secretaries on Friday, while assistant administrators (junior officials such as recently graduated lawyers, economists and auditors) will be tested on 11 and 12 December.

For smaller countries like Malta and Latvia, which are fielding fewer than 100 candidates in each category, the selection process could be over in a few months.

For big countries like Poland and Hungary, with around 1,500 people each competing for junior administrator jobs, the final decisions may not be made until next spring.

It doesn't mean, though, that the successful candidates (or "laureates") will automatically get a job in an EU institution.

TOUGH CHOICE 12,000 candidates compete for 5,000 jobs Tests in 17 centres in Central and Eastern Europe and Brussels Candidates face multiple-choice questions about their special fields of interest and about EU institutions, plus verbal and numerical reasoning tests They also sit written tests in two languages The best candidates are invited to an oral interview in Brussels

Guy van Biesen, the head of European Personnel Selection Office or EPSO, says they will be simply put on a reserve list, and it will be up to the institutions and their services to recruit from these lists.

The EU says it has no national quotas for recruiting officials.

But the European Commission, which plans to hire most of the new laureates, has set recruitment targets until 2010 for each of the 10 newcomers.

The biggest of them, Poland, gets the lion's share with a target of 1,341 posts, while at the other end of the scale only 83 will be recruited from tiny Malta.

Cyprus has 110, Slovenia - 134, Slovakia - 279, Hungary - 489, the Czech Republic - 492.

But the targets may not be met, simply because EU governments dispute that the Commission needs so many people.

Complaints

Officials from the incoming countries sometimes complain that their best young diplomats are planning to jump ship and go to work for the EU.

We are trying to ensure that there is a good feel for what these countries are about European Commission spokesman Eric Mamer EU values: United in diversity?

However, any who work in their countries' missions in Brussels may be unable to take the December tests, because they coincide with an EU summit.

Because the selection process is so cumbersome, there will be a trickle, rather than a flood of new officials in the EU.

Still, there are concerns that the newcomers, from 10 more countries at once, may not be entirely welcome by the old staff.

The European Commission is doing what it can to avoid a culture clash.

European Commission spokesman Eric Mamer says it will organise conferences on the culture of these countries, as well as film events and talks about their political and administrative organisation, to ensure there is a good feel for "what these countries are about".

There are testing times ahead then, both for the old and the new members of the European Union.