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European Commission

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European Commission reviews

4.3

88% would recommend to a friend

(841 total reviews)
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Ursula von der Leyen

76% approve of CEO

66% positive business outlook

European Commission has an employee rating of 4.3 out of 5 stars, based on 841 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The European Commission employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Regierung & öffentliche Verwaltung industry (3.6 stars).

Reviews by job title

841 reviews
3.0
Jan 17, 2016

Interesting experience

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Could work independently. Developed my own research line. Nice international atmosphere. Great place to live regarding leisure, culture, nature and climate. Salary.

Cons

Lots of bureaucracy. Incompetent managers, some of them doing nothing and waiting for their retirement. Trying to initiate collaborations with other JRC departments/projects almost impossible because managers do not want to share success. Result: working on islands, inventing the same wheel in different places ..... Being part of the temporal staff sometimes felt like being a marionet of the hierarchy. People at the lower levels sometimes don't dare to speak because they have a different opinion than their department head or project leader.

3.0
Nov 4, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Unbelievably great financial situation: in research, you can lead a project of your dreams, money is not an issue. Your salary is also one of the highest you can find in Europe. Great life to work ratio, good benefits. Mostly friendly environment. Culturally diverse but respecting every aspect of this differentiation. People of all walks of life, it is never boring at work or outside.

Cons

I have met several unique imbeciles in some of the positions of this institution. Starting from staff asking to change my birth certificate, finishing even with threats. Even though I was working for Joint RESEARCH Centre, the Human Resources just can't seem to figure out that administrative part of the RESEARCH centre usually deals with problems that scientists have and help them with these problems. Instead, I felt like I had to serve the administration, not the other way around. The administrative personnel has no grip on what they should do and how to do that properly. As such they are wasting the precious time of the researchers who are the core of the institution. One of the worst things is the recruiting process. Not only it's a terrible waste of time, I haven't met a single person who went trough the recruitment without some problems. Even if this institution is exceptional in being intolerant to racism and xenophobia, quite a large part of the staff does not differentiate the countries, and do not care about any tough feelings one may experience when completely mixing the countries and places of origin. Finally, some of the permanent staff does not work at all. Due to some reasons that they cannot be fired, they just relax and stay in their warm position drinking coffee and chatting all the time.

2.0
Sep 1, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

-Excellent life-work balance -Decent pay and benefits, including language training

Cons

-You must speak french to fit -Environment is too local, not very international contrary to the other DG's -Corruption, nepotism and incompetence are very widespread -Probably the service of the European Commission with less graduates working there -Old fashion management, highly hierarchical -High internal tensions among departments

Viewing 28 - 30 of 841 Reviews

Glassdoor has 1,893 European Commission reviews submitted anonymously by European Commission employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if European Commission is right for you.