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The European Central Bank promotes staff who “know the right people” rather than those who perform well in their jobs, employees have claimed in a union survey.
Just 19 per cent of ECB employees polled by the Ipso union believed that the central bank “does a good job of promoting the most competent people”.
“Staff are angry with [what they believe is] widespread favouritism at the ECB,” Carlos Bowles, vice-president of Ipso, told the Financial Times, adding that employees felt “that ECB leadership is doing nothing about it”.
The survey, to which 30 per cent of the ECB’s 4,700 staff responded, is just the latest to suggest staff dissatisfaction at the Frankfurt institution. A separate study last year also pointed to rising stress levels among employees.
In the latest survey, which did not include the central bank’s 500 trainees, 77 per cent of respondents said that “knowing the right people” was key to getting ahead in the organisation. This compared with 65 per cent who held that view in a similar survey a decade ago.
Back then, 46 per cent of respondents said that good performance led to promotion, compared with just 34 per cent now.
The most recent poll, conducted in February, also suggested the central bank’s employees were not always comfortable raising problems with management. More than two-thirds said they were “reluctant to reveal problems or errors” to senior management, compared with just 42 per cent who had that view a decade ago.
Communication was another sensitive issue, with two-thirds of the respondents saying they did not trust the ECB’s communications on HR policies.
The ECB said it was “looking carefully at the survey and analysing the outcomes”. But it pointed out that in its own staff survey in 2024, which had twice as many participants, 85 per cent of employees said they were proud to work for the central bank. Turnover among permanent employees is just 1.8 per cent a year.
The ECB also stressed that its recruitment processes were “designed to avoid favouritism with inbuilt checks and balances to ensure fairness and prevent individual influence”.
