One among many widely-circulated "cartoons expressing staff's mood."

"After having seen several demonstrations in MU [Munich] and several of his proposals refused by the AC in December," told us a source about the tyrannical EPO President, Benoît Battistelli, "after having fired two staff representatives (Ion Brumme and Elizabeth Hardon), having downgraded Malika Weaver and having attacked Laurent Prunier, Jesús Areso and others, and after having seen two well-attended demonstrations in MU and TH [The Hague] in January with increasing media coverage, president Battistelli now attempts to polish his image by the help of a propaganda show on Thursday, 4 February, in the Auditorium of the Dutch EPO branch in Rijswijk.

“His big show reminds many of the former East-German propaganda events in the Palace of the Republic (Berlin) where only hand-selected citizens were admitted.”
      --Anonymous"For the EPO regime to fill the Auditorium with possibly 300 staff members (out of more than 2500), they had to “volunteer” probationers. The original plan to select 400 “volunteers” had apparently to be given up. Nobody wants to see the EPO president these days. EPO staff disagrees with his arrogance, his brutal management style and his disrespect for the law. Mr Battistelli might indeed be so disconnected from the world that he does not realise how futile this attempt to convince staff is. But there must be a reason for having such a propaganda event. He might hope to be able to demonstrate to line managers and to the Administrative Council that he still has some support of staff. But he fools noone. His big show reminds many of the former East-German propaganda events in the Palace of the Republic (Berlin) where only hand-selected citizens were admitted.

"Caricatures express the mood of staff."

We recently also learned of new efforts to give the media a false perception of staff's support for management (not just this happiness propaganda which we wrote about last year). The EPO is misleading the media and sometimes the media helps the EPO mislead the public (they also bamboozled Glyn Moody, based on dozens of new comments). The media's role in all this will be the subject of our next post.

Below is a new cartoon which mocks Battistelli's outrageous characterisation of staff in Politico. ⬆