Staff
The Commission's civil service is headed by a Secretary General, currently Catherine Day. According to figures published by the Commission, 23,043 persons were employed by the Commission as officials and temporary agents in April 2007. In addition to these, 9019 "external staff" were employed; these are largely people employed on time-limited contracts (called "contractual agents" in the jargon), staff seconded from national administrations (called "Detached National Experts"), or trainees (called "stagiaires"). The single largest DG is the Directorate-General for Translation, with 2186 staff.
European civil servants are sometimes referred to in the anglophone press as "Eurocrats" (a term coined by Richard Mayne, a journalist and personal assistant to the first Commission president, Walter Hallstein).; high-ranking officials are sometimes referred to as "European Mandarins".
Read more about this topic: European Civil Service
Famous quotes containing the word staff:
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
—Bible: Hebrew Psalms, 23:4.
“We achieve “active” mastery over illness and death by delegating all responsibility for their management to physicians, and by exiling the sick and the dying to hospitals. But hospitals serve the convenience of staff not patients: we cannot be properly ill in a hospital, nor die in one decently; we can do so only among those who love and value us. The result is the institutionalized dehumanization of the ill, characteristic of our age.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)
“Then he took his staff in his hand, and chose five smooth stones from the wadi, and put them in his shepherd s bag, in the pouch; his sling was in his hand, and he drew near to the Philistine.”
—Bible: Hebrew, 1 Samuel 17:40.