Growing Discrimination in the European Patent Office (EPO)

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Feb 07, 2026

The European Patent Office's Central Staff Committee had produced a new paper (dated Thursday) and shared it with staff. It's about yet another way to impoverish and discriminate against staff. From the communication sent not too long ago:

Dear Colleagues,

Staff representation have published many times on the issue of under-rewarding of certain groups of staff. The administration have now introduced another manner in which they can impose an unfair distribution of rewards, via reducing the minimum bonus amount again to €1k in 2026.

In this paper it is shown that when the minimum bonus amount was reduced from €3k in 2024 to €2k in 2025, it was the already disadvantaged groups - women, part-time workers, those on maternity leave, newcomers, and YPs - that were adversely affected. It is therefore to be expected that these groups will be further disadvantaged by the reduced minimum.

The full paper contains some visuals (chart):

Zentraler Personalausschuss
Central Staff Committee
Le Comité Central du Personnel

Munich, 05-02-2026
sc26014cp

Minimum bonus amount reduced again,
increasing disparity between groups of staff

Another policy amended to aid discrimination

>

Staff representation have published many times on the issue of under-rewarding of certain groups of staff. In particular, the lower rate of reward for both pensionable and non-pensionable rewards for women and part-time staff. The administration have now introduced another manner in which they can impose an unfair distribution of rewards, via reducing the minimum bonus amount.

In 2025 the Administration reduced the minimum bonus payment from €3,000 to €2,000. Despite concerns raised, a further reduction to €1,000 is now planned for 2026. Staff representatives warned that lowering the minimum bonus would not affect all staff equally. Instead, the lower bound will likely be used only for those groups already receiving lower-than-average reward rates, only compounding the disadvantage.

In order to understand the potential impact of the further reduction of the minimum, we requested data from the administration for 2024, when the minimum was €3,000 and from 2025 when the minimum was €2,000. The data confirms that the concern was well founded. The graph below showing the differences in average bonus amounts shows a clear and troubling trend: after the 2025 reduction in the minimum bonus, disparities between staff groups did not narrow – they widened.

The graph shows which groups of staff are above or below the average payment, where 0% is no difference to the average amount for all bonus receivers (2024: €3,674, 2024: €3,456), and how this difference changed between 2024 and 2025 as a result of the lowered minimum bonus amount. The following trends can be seen;

• Men moved further above the average bonus, increasing their relative advantage

• Women fell further below the average, deepening an already existing gap

• Part-time staff saw their disadvantage nearly double

• Staff on maternity leave, already having the biggest gap, widened further

• Newcomers slipped further behind

• Young Professionals were also adversely affected by the change

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The first reduction in the minimum bonus did not create fairness or balance, rather assisted in growing the divide between groups who are already better rewarded and those who are not. By lowering the minimum again to €1,000 in 2026, the Administration risks amplifying this effect. For many colleagues, receiving a minimum bonus may not be seen as recognising their contribution, but rather a token measure to artificially increase the reward rate of a group, while entrenching inequality.

Staff representatives continue to call for a reward system that focuses more on pensionable rewards, and rewards fairly across all groups, rather than policies that systematically disadvantage women, part-time workers, newcomers, staff on maternity leave, and Young Professionals.

Your Central Staff Committee

The term "Young Professionals" is a bit of a misnomer. Like at IBM, lesser experienced people are being weaponised against veterans; it's a race to the bottom, basically. █