One EU Civil Service or Many? The Commission and Council Secretariat Compared

Scholarship on the EU bureaucracy has focused overwhelmingly on the European Commission. Though the Commission is larger than other institutions and it plays a central role in the EU system, it forms only one part of the EU administration. Drawing on new empirical data from research on the Commission and on the General Secretariat of the Council, this paper compares EU civil servants from the two. It finds that, despite similar backgrounds and profiles, staff from the two bodies differ in terms of their beliefs, values and attitudes. Informed by analysis of data from surveys of the Commission workforce (n=5545) conducted in 2014 and the Council Secretariat (n=1356) in 2016, the paper argues, first, that the differences can be explained by different socialising impacts exerted by the two bodies and the different organizational settings, second, that the comparison has important implications for the existing literature on values and role perceptions in EU institutions.