The Irish permanent representation to the EU’s transition team initially reached out to incoming commissioners by email, rather than setting meetings or leveraging relationships with key decision-makers, three officials said.

Two officials said senior diplomats should have played a larger role in negotiations, rather than leaving talks to the permanent representation and to McGrath’s team.

No master plan

An official involved in negotiations for jobs in the cabinets of incoming commissioners told POLITICO that the process overall was far more chaotic than expected, and that “no country has a master plan.” 

They said transition teams in the permanent representations had fewer staff than expected, had to navigate changing rules around cabinet hiring, and had to meet specific criteria around gender, age, experience and rank within the EU civil service. 

EU political groups also exerted significant pressure during the negotiations, while negotiating teams had to accommodate the preferences of incoming commissioners, and of the Commission departments they would be attached to, which changed the landscape again, the official said. 

Ireland is concerned by the decline in the number of its officials in the EU institutions, warning in a national strategy on the issue of a future “demographic cliff” in the number of its staffers as “many” senior officials retire.

In the strategy, the government said Ireland is “significantly under-represented” at entry and mid-management levels across the  EU institutions, and that the numbers will “fall dramatically over the next decade unless action is taken now.”