Drama at the European Patent Office (EPO) This Week

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Apr 23, 2026,
updated Apr 24, 2026

This coming Friday (1 day from now) there will be work in the datacentre and "we do not anticipate any service disruption as traffic will automatically fail over to alternative routes," the operator says. Time will tell. The EPO will have a very large strike tomorrow. We'll be covering the EPO quite a lot this weekend and next week.

In the meantime SUEPO (the only genuine, true union of the EPO's workers) tells staff that the brother-in-law of EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" (António Campinos) was "empty handed" today. He accomplished nothing, so strikes will carry on and on until he leaves (or something to that same effect). Quoting SUEPO's publication:

INTERNATIONALE GEWERKSCHAFT IM EUROPÄISCHEN PATENTAMT
STAFF UNION OF THE EUROPEAN PATENT OFFICE
UNION SYNDICALE DE L'OFFICE EUROPEEN DES BREVETS

Zentraler Vorstand
Central Executive Committee
Bureau central

23 April 2026
su26007cp 0.2.1 0.3.2

Flash report: President finally meets SUEPO
President comes empty handed

Dear SUEPO members,
Dear Colleagues,

SUEPO met the President and the three Vice Presidents today on Thursday 23 April 2026, at 11.00 hrs, a meeting he scheduled to take place just 3 hours before the meeting of the General Consultative Committee where the proposed new salary adjustment procedure (SAP) was tabled.

This was the first time the President had agreed to talk to SUEPO on the topic of the salary adjustment procedure, and he came empty handed. He only repeated the same tired narrative, hiding behind the demands of some delegates, claiming that it is not him who wants to erode our salaries, but the Administrative Council that insists on it. The President has at his disposal a plethora of strong arguments, including the impressive financial situation of the Office, €20 billion in funds, with all pension liabilities more than covered and productivity increases in double digits in recent years. Nevertheless, he still fails to protect staff purchasing power.

In contrast to the President, SUEPO came to the meeting again ready to talk about proposals for improvement that could lead towards an end to the industrial actions. The President refused to even hear those proposals.

Although the staff are set to lose a further €1.4 billion, the President claimed that his proposal was the best he could present to the Administrative Council for decision. We countered that the proposed SAP takes even more from staff than the one that is currently in force. It causes long term loss of purchasing power and is lacking any provision to stop the erosion of salaries, pensions and other benefits. Far from being the best that could be achieved, it is the worst possible outcome of a procedure that is supposed to maintain purchasing power.

Faced with such a stubborn refusal to make any compromise for staff, SUEPO stated that the administration can expect the industrial action to continue and intensify until such a time as we have a fair salary adjustment and a President that is willing and able to protect the interests of staff.

SUEPO Central

We shall say more tomorrow. █