Four months ago, as I gazed across the sea of faces at the opening
conference of the Winter Traineeship, I was taken aback. Not by the considerable
number of stagiaires sat in Flagey’s
auditorium, but rather by the homogeneity of their appearance. In spite of
their diverse origins, both within and outside of the European Union (EU), I
could discern only one non-Caucasian among the crowd. Two days ago, while forcing
down some overcooked vegetables in Charlemagne’s cafeteria, I casually undertook
the same exercise. It would appear that the fonctionnaire
community does not offer much more of cultural mosaic: I saw one black man.
In an institution that prides itself on its multicultural composition
and whose very foundations are built on the union of different peoples, the visible
lack of ethnic diversity at the European Commission (EC) is, for me, highly
problematic. Indeed, the very perception of the EC as a multicultural organisation
should be reconsidered. While it is certainly true that the EC recruits from 27
different countries, each state is almost invariably represented by individuals
who fall into their country’s dominant ethnic group.
This is unrepresentative of the ethnically diverse Europe that we
live in. More than 3 million Britons are of Indian origin; a large number of
French citizens are of North Africa ethnicity; and the Netherlands has a large
Turkish community. No European country is painted white, so why is the
Commission and other European Institutions generally so?
It would seem that either European citizens from ethnic minorities
are not applying for professional positions within the institutions, or they
are not succeeding in passing the concours.
While historically, the lower educational level of citizens from certain ethnic
minorities would have impeded their ability to apply and succeed at the concours in the past, this is changing.
Students of Indian background in the UK for example, constitute some of the
highest achievers. As more is done on a national level to address historical educational
disadvantages of ethnic minorities, the European Union has role to play in ensuring
that the European institutions’ personnel reflect the demographic makeup of
Europe today. In order to achieve this, the European Personnel Section Office’s
(ESPO) must incentivise qualified individuals from ethnic minorities to apply.
While ESPO places ‘diversity’ among its six values, its adoption
of a non-discriminatory recruitment process denies the possibility affirmative
action schemes. Member states are strongly divided in their policy on positive
discrimination in public sector recruitment. While the UK government runs a summer
internship programme that only black and minority ethnic (BME) Britons may
apply for, Slovakia’s Constitutional Court has declared that providing
advantages for people of an ethnic or racial minority group is against its
Constitution. EPSO’s hesitance to address the ethic imbalance in the European
Institutions may therefore be explained, to a certain degree, by the vastly
differing domestic approaches to positive discrimination.
Nevertheless, whether positive discrimination is employed or
not, the case for a more heterogeneous European governance is clear. If
the EU is to achieve its objective of ensuring the well-being of all European
citizens as set out in the Lisbon Treaty, there must be representation of these
citizens in key decision-making positions. It might benefit the EU to take a
step back and remind itself of its own motto for a moment...
Unity in diversity.
By Sonia Jordan
