EPO: Taking Away From the Staff to Give More to the Rich
THE EPO is Europe's second-largest institution but maybe Europe's most corrupt institution. Its former ruler (Benoît Battistelli) and current ruler (António Campinos) basically bribed their way into positions of power and then gave the top roles to friends of theirs, who don't even have any formal background/qualifications in the matters they would be forced to deal with. So instead of running the patent office like a real patent office they just milked it like it was a cow; they gave as many patents as possible, even European software patents - i.e. patents which are both illegal and undesirable. They bullied critics. They censored staff representatives. They outsourced jobs and sent them offshore (even when it was patently illegal). Now they try to replace staff with bots, which is also illegal. This is basically a crime, but they say if a crime gets committed close enough to heads of states (or implicates them), then nobody will prosecute the key perpetrators or actually enforce the law. Even the new so-called 'patent courts' are invalid, illegal, and unconstitutional. The judges are staff of corporations - that's how bad things have become. We're talking about stuff folks became accustomed to in Moscow or Beijing, not the EU.
The Central Staff Committee (CSC) wrote to EPO staff earlier this week:
Our comments on the proposed update submitted to the General Consultative Committee (GCC)
Dear Colleagues,
The President has tabled in the General Consultation Committee (GCC) meeting of 2 June a document on "Education and Childcare Reform guidelines (application of education and childcare reform)" labelled GCC/DOC 10/2025.
The staff representation was invited to an "Information Session" of 1 hour on 28 April.
The document is a note on a proposed update of the Intranet page on the Education Allowance. It intends to address the issue of categorisation of direct and indirect education costs since the entry into force of the Education and Childcare reform of 2021.
Following successful litigation from staff in front of the Appeals Committee (ApC), the Office reintroduces the reimbursement of compulsory exam fees and administrative fees as direct costs but only as of 2025/2026. No retroactivity is applied for the years 2022/2023, 2023/2024 and 2024/2025. Only staff members who had challenged the lack of reimbursement for those years will be reimbursed.
The ApC had also recommended
Reimbursement of undisputed part of education costs without asking the staff member to amend their request, so that staff can promptly pay invoiced school fees.
Salary pay slips should contain clear information and explain under which Article or measure education costs are reimbursed.
The Office decided not to follow these recommendations.
Several other positive opinions from the ApC are also not followed by the Office e.g. those concerning the British School of the Netherlands.
Read more in these written comments we sent to the administration.
We wrote about this before; they're cheapening the Office when it comes to staff while all the other costs go up, despite obvious degradation in quality. So staff gets squeezed harder and harder and those served are the rich and corrupt, even companies that aren't European. Today's Office exists to service foreign companies against Europe (and at the expense of Europeans). The supplied documents aren't entirely banal; the first concerns the Appeals Committee: (as mentioned here last month)
The Appellant challenged the non-reimbursement of education costs under the rules introduced by the Childcare and Education Allowance Reform as passed in Administrative Council Decision CA/D 4/21 and implemented by Circulars No. 301 and No. 411 in 2021. The Appellant also disputed the reform in general. The Appellant's request to reimburse exam fees at the school of his child as direct education costs under Article 71(5) ServRegs was rejected by the Office. This was the subject of his appeal.
The second comes from the CSC members in the GCC.
From the Conclusion: (last page)
68. The proposed note is not only of questionable “normative” value, it attempts to establish a practice of non-reimbursement deviating from the Appeals Committee recommendations. Furthermore, since intranet guidelines can be amended at any time their content is unforseeable for staff. Moreover, when they deviate from the Service Regulations as interpreted by the Appeals Committee.69. The Office only partly follows the two recommendations below and by restricting them to compulsory costs and excludes the years 2022/2023/2024:
a) Exam fees constitute a component of tuition fees and should therefore be fully refunded as direct costs under Article 71.
b) Administration costs are part of the enrolment fee and must be fully refunded as direct costs under Article 71.
70. The Office does not follow the recommendations below:
c) Compulsory day trips and in-school activity days, being an integral part of the school’s educational program, qualify as tuition fees and should therefore be fully refunded as direct costs under Article 71.
d) Mandatory university campus fees should be considered partially as tuition fees, warranting
a partial refund under Article 71, with a recommended reimbursement rate of 50%.
e) A significant legal flaw occurred during the consultation process, as the wording of Article 71 ServRegs and Article 20 of CA/D 4/21 was substantively changed after the GCC consultation.
f) The Office should refrain from compelling staff members to modify their requests in the Education Allowance Portal and instead reimburse the undisputed amounts directly.
g) The Office should ensure that salary slips clearly indicate the articles corresponding to each type of reimbursement.
71. In addition, the Office intends to apply restrictions on aspects challenged in on-going appeal proceedings, preventing further successful litigation on certain aspects of the education and childcare reform.
This may seem like "just a matter of money", but as well shall soon show in relation the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) to some families this can be a matter of life and death.
Put bluntly, the Office is killing its own workers [1, 2] for top officials to financially benefit (at their expense). █