Bonum Certa Men Certa

Insensitivity at the EPO’s Management – Part VI: Fear Climate and Antipathy Now the 'Norm'

Smiling judge



Summary: The so-called "reign of terror" at the EPO (that is what the mainstream media calls it now) as explained by an insider, based on personal experiences

TODAY we continue a long series which explores and details the ethical depravity which prevails at the high 'circles' of EPO management (Team Battistelli). Previously, in part 5, we explained how workers were left to 'rot' after their family had fallen critically ill. This would typically be a good point for staff union/s to step in and help, but at the EPO the sole genuine union, SUEPO, is under severe attacks. Battistelli's union-busting campaign has instated a reign of terror which paralyses not only union activity but also ordinary workers. SUEPO has been writing about exploitation of illness for quite some time, so it seems like a golden opportunity to intervene.



“It hampered heavily both union and staff representation functions.”
      --Anonymous
"SUEPO is also not a focused structure," however, as a source told us because "it has always been torn apart from its inner nature of internal unions; people in it first and utmost care for their position in EPO. Same attitude that in present times translates into fear for themselves. It hampered heavily both union and staff representation functions."

A seatbelt analogy was once used to explain this. Or an oxygen mask. Staff union members -- and especially leaders -- have had to ensure their own safety too, as under Battistelli's notorious reign of terror they can suddenly find themselves wrongly accused and then dismissed in a kangaroo court. What Battistelli has therefore done leaves vulnerable staff (or staff he does not like) almost totally defenseless.

"Now I haven't been paid for months," a source one told us about the EPO, "they fabricated a new rule just for me: they assume that I am not present at my residence (which I am not obliged to be, but nevertheless) and for every assumed day of absence they take away a twentieth of my wage. I have been forced to interrupt my medical treatment and notify myself with a passport to the Office premises. As it is, I won't receive my wage again. They spare themselves the trouble of a questionable dismissal, yet they exert upon me the same type of pressure that a dismissal can cause: no wage. Office rules require that no deduction shall overcome 50% of the wage, but they kept up to 80% in the past and now 100%. They know it: who could ever complain and how? And before which court?"

“They know it: who could ever complain and how? And before which court?”
      --Anonymous
The dubious 'legality' of it aside, it's not hard to see why not many people even bother applying for a job at the EPO anymore. The required qualifications went down by a lot just in order to attract more applicants (low-quality applications).

"I am aware of intimidations and other more or less explicit pressures made onto medical doctors," a source told us, "some I found out about during my activity as a staff representative, some other are those actually following me as a patient right now. I also have evidence that the doctors put in charge by the Office under contract or as internal officers have broken rules of their own professional national order."

Such is the 'joy' of working for the EPO...

“They have their own inconsistent convenience of career interests to preserve: truly it's nothing, but to an emotionally and morally semi-blind creature that has lost any professional profile and moral sense, that's all that matters.”
      --Anonymous
"The Office has been sowing evil and bad acts all over," the source continued, "inside and outside the Office, for over a decade at a point that nothing can be covered, let alone erased for much longer. There is reason for that, which cannot be found at just one level, such as corruption or private interests: everything is made possible by anthropologically well understandable mechanisms, the same type of mechanisms that allow the existence of things such as the Gulags, the Stasi, Auschwitz and the Holocaust: human beings with the soul and mind of worm-like creatures. They have their own inconsistent convenience of career interests to preserve: truly it's nothing, but to an emotionally and morally semi-blind creature that has lost any professional profile and moral sense, that's all that matters."

Antipathy now seems like a recruitment criterion for Team Battistelli, which probably serves to explain why one of the top hires (Vice-President) has corruption indictments against him in Strasbourg and many criminal investigations against him in his home country.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Slopwatch: Brian Fagioli, Google News, and Other LLM Slopfarms
Why does Google News keep promoting these fake articles?
Links 29/10/2025: Amazon Kept "Data Center Water Use Secret", "Abuse of Power" Against Media
Links for the day
Gemini Links 29/10/2025: "My Hardware Specs" and "Goodbye Debian…"
Links for the day
EPO Cocainegate: Feedback and Clarifications
Part III will come out soon
Links 29/10/2025: "US Military Is Destroying the Planet Beyond Imagination" and Boat Strikes Deemed Unlawful
Links for the day
Quality Comes First (Techrights Search)
It's generally working already, but we wish to polish it some more
Techrights Party Countdown
Late next week we'll be holding a party near our home
European Parliament and Council Directive on Privacy is Vanishing
"edited / censored some time more recently"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 28, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 28, 2025
Slopwatch: The March of Slopfarms, From UbuntuPIT to Linux Journal and to Various Fake Sites Still Promoted by Google News
It's so worrying to see what the Web has become
Links 29/10/2025: CISA, Ukraine, and Amazon Problems
Links for the day
[Teaser] The EPO's Spokesperson, a Cocaine User, Fancies Young Women
How's that for "optics" in the EU and Europe's second-largest institution?
How Will António Campinos Respond to the EPO's 'Cocainegate'?
That's the same thing we saw and still see when the press deals with enablers and partners of Jeffrey Epstein
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part IV: There Cannot be Free Software Without Free Press and Free Information
One day, one can hope, more people will recognise that for Software Freedom we need free press and free thinkers
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part III: Principled Stance Is Never Cheap
Protecting the truth and insisting that the general public is made aware of things that really happened isn't cheap
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part II: Because Scarcity of Accurate Information Breeds Collective Ignorance
we too will strive to share information that's aggressively suppressed
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: More New Arrivals at Geminispace, xkcd on "Document Forgery"
Links for the day
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part I: Defence of the Truth
This year we make a very strong, firm statement for truth, even if that means explaining our work to the top media judge in the country
Links 28/10/2025: Meta and Fentanylware (CheeTok) Age-Restricted Down Under, "Britain Needs China’s Money"
Links for the day
Links 28/10/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon and Charter to Cut 1,200 Jobs
Links for the day
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part II: The Person Who Planted Paid-for Fake News for the European Patent Office (EPO) is a Cocaine User, Friend of António Campinos, Now on Record as Having Been Arrested
Background: High-level manager at the European Patent Office caught in public with cocaine, arrested
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 27, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 27, 2025
Google News Drowning in Slop (and Slopfarms That Hijack About Half the Results)
Google News seems to be drowning in this stuff
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: "How to Maximize Your Positive Impact" and ASCII Art and Artist Attribution
Links for the day
PETA and Activism
Being staff or volunteer in PETA isn't easy
Big Blue, Huge Debt
debt will soar again
Links 27/10/2025: Mass Surveillance Sold as "AI", People Reluctant to Lose Physical Media
Links for the day
Parties and Milestones Again
we've begun putting up about 40 balloons
Techrights' 19th Anniversary: Bronze
Time to go back to preparing for this anniversary
Our Latest European Patent Office (EPO) Series Will Last Several Weeks, Will Ask the EPO Management and the European Union (EU) Very Difficult Questions
If nobody loses a job (or jobs) over this, then the EU basically became no better than Colombia or Nicaragua
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, Brian Fagioli, and Google News
We focus on stories that are fake or LLM slop that disguises itself as "news" about Linux
Links 27/10/2025: Wikipedia Vandalism, Bruce Perens Opens up on Childhood
Links for the day
This Site Could Not be Done by LLMs Even If It Wanted to (Because It's Not a Parrot of What Other Sites Say)
LLMs have no knowledge or deep understanding
Microsoft is Disloyal Towards Its Most Loyal Employees
Against its most faithful enablers
19 Years, No Censorship
No factual information is ever going to be removed, more so if it is in the public interest
We Are Not a Conventional Site, That's Why They Hate (or Love) Us
Throughout the week this week we'll be focusing on the EPO
Following the Line of Cocaine All the Way to the Top
Even a million denials and spin-doctoring won't distract from the core issue
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part I: António Campinos Brought Corruption and Nepotism to the EPO, Then Came the Cocaine
High-level manager at the European Patent Office (EPO) caught in public with cocaine, the Office has some answering to do
Purchasing/Possessing Computers Isn't the Same as Controlling Computers
Let's strive to put computers back under the control of their users, no matter who purchased these (usually the users)
Gemini Links 27/10/2025: Alhena 5.4.3 and Fixing Bash
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 26, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 26, 2025
Thankfully We've Made Copies of More Interesting Data From statCounter
If statCounter (the Web site or the 'webapp') vanished overnight, we'd still have something left of it
More Silent Layoffs at IBM/Red Hat
when the media counts such layoffs or presents tallies the numbers are very incomplete