EPO Management Wants Everything to be Done in Microsoft Spyware

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Sep 25, 2026

Background: EPO Administrative Council Still Asleep at the Wheel (outsourcing to Microsoft)

16 days ago: European Patent Office (EPO): No Transparency and No Paper Trail (harvesting clicks)

Two years ago: EPO: We and Microsoft Will Spy on Everything (No Physical Copies)

The Central Staff Committee at the EPO has circulated a new open letter about further restrictions on EPO staff. Here's the letter sent last week:

European Patent Office
80298 Munich
Germany

Central Staff Committee
Comité central du personnel
Zentraler Personalausschuss

centralSTCOM@epo.org

Reference: sc26073cl

European Patent Office | 80298 MUNICH | GERMANY

To: Mr António Campinos (President of the EPO)
Cc: Social Dialogue

By email:
To: president@epo.org
Cc: socialdialogue@epo.org

OPEN LETTER

Duty travel restrictions in the New Ways of Working

Dear Mr President,

In 2022, the Office has adopted a new duty travel policy cutting the overall Office travel budget and forcing staff to make use of virtual meetings, to attend mainly online training and to attend in-person conferences only locally. In addition, the long-standing practice of one-week visit of new colleagues to their peers of another place of employment has been abolished.

Cross-site teams have been generalised among the Office. However, Heads of Department are asked to maximise the impact of the trimmed budget and take into account the specific distribution of cross-site teams. In practice, the manager is often the one to travel or a selected few colleagues under his discretion.

Staff representation has repeatedly expressed concerns about the duty travel restrictions. In-person meetings foster collaboration and relationship building compared to virtual meetings.

The situation of the October 2026 Campus Days is another example of the absurdity of the situation. Travel can be arranged only for single staff members at one site to reunite with their team at another site. If two or more are isolated, there is no guarantee that travel can be arranged. Colleagues who are part of the same team, working together throughout the year, may end up isolated during the very events allegedly designed to “bring our staff together”. This contradicts the announced purpose of the Campus Days, “to meet with colleagues and attend live presentations, workshops and other events. As

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Campus Days are all about spending quality time face-to-face, it is not possible to attend remotely.”

We stress once again that the Office should relax the duty travel restrictions to allow again general exchange of visits of colleagues between sites, not only to enhance the quality of work produced but also to build better teams, improve staff morale, and show that the Office cares about staff as people.

Sincerely yours,

Derek Kelly
Chairman of the Central Staff Committee

Some time soon we'll resume the series about the corrupt EPO management; it's rather telling that it does not enjoy the support of staff.

In reality, this management should be ousted for normalising cocaine at the Office. █