Multinational staffing and organizational functioning in the Commission of the European Communities

Abstract

Staffing the Commission civil service with nationals from all nine European Community member states is necessary for pragmatic and political reasons, but multinational staffing also creates serious problems for the organization. Requirements for nationality balance in the Commission civil service have negative repercussions for personnel policy as well as the civil servants' career prospects and morale; nationality-based informal organization often interferes with organizational performance; multinational staffing results in a multilingual civil service and thus creates language and communication problems; the interaction of persons from nine member states creates a potential for nationality-related friction; and civil servants may have divided loyalties to the Commission on the one hand and to their member states on the other. National representation in the ranks is taken most seriously in those Commission units that have important policy concerns. Hence expanding the Commission's powers will increase the saliency of the nationality issue in that organization.

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