IP/06/143
Brussels, 9 February 2006
Inauguration of the EAS: The European Administrative School (EAS), the first inter-institutional training centre celebrates its official inauguration on 10 February 2006 The EAS was created a year ago to provide training for staff of all the European institutions. The aim is to promote cooperation among the institutions in the field of training, to support the spread of common values and good practice, and to create synergies in the use of human and financial resources. The creation of the school was complimentary to the greatly increased emphasis placed on staff training under the Reform.
The School currently provides training for newly hired staff, candidates for "certification" to move from the assistant to the administrator grade, and management training courses.
Since becoming fully operational in August 2005, the School has already trained nearly 1000 people on the 30 courses it organised. In 2006 it plans to put on about 45 4-day induction courses catering for around 1800 newcomers and 18 8-day programmes for 270 middle managers as well as delivering the 40-day training cycle for about 150 candidates in the certification process. It also hopes to run some pilot projects later in the year for senior management.
The school’s team consists of 18 people, though many training courses are run by outside contractors selected by the School through public tender. In Brussels it is located at 46 rue du Luxembourg and the branch in Luxembourg in the Wagner building on the Kirchberg. The Director, David Walker, has spent much of his 32-year career in the institutions dealing with personnel issues and was Head of the Commission's training unit between 1997-2000.
Among the highlights of the inauguration are the addresses from Dagmar Roth-Behrendt, Vice-President of the European Parliament, and Siim Kallas, Vice-President of the European Commission, as well as the keynote speech "Leading change" to be delivered by Jean-François Manzoni, a leading figure in organisational development and leadership. Roger Grass, Registrar of the European Court of Justice and Chairman of the School’s Management Board, will preside over the morning's proceedings.
200 people are expected to attend the event, among them Secretaries-General, senior officials, training and human resource managers from the European institutions, as well as members of the Permanent Representations to the EU and Directors of various national schools and institutes of public administration.
More information can be obtained on the EAS website on Europa:
http://europa.eu/eas
