PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN A EUROPEAN CONTEXT. CASE STUDY: POSSIBILITIES TO COMPLETE THE TRIAL PERIOD – PRACTICE AT NATIONAL LEVEL VERSUS PRACTICE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION CIVIL SERVICE TRIBUNAL

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN A EUROPEAN CONTEXT. CASE STUDY: POSSIBILITIES TO COMPLETE THE TRIAL PERIOD – PRACTICE AT NATIONAL LEVEL VERSUS PRACTICE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION CIVIL SERVICE TRIBUNAL Associate professor Camelia Daciana STOIAN1 Associate professor Eugenia IOVĂNAȘ2 Abstract As social policy is outlined and its objectives stated in the provisions of Article 151 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, both the Union and the member states must be responsible for respecting "fundamental social rights such as those stated in the European Social Charter signed in Turin on 18 October 1961 and in the Community Charter of Fundamental Social Rights of Workers adopted in 1989". In the light of these goals, we are concerned with an analysis aimed at a legal and fair promotion and harmonization of the procedure for filling positions at the public administration level, with an emphasis on the protection of social rights and the harmonization of good practices developed, in conditions of honest social protection and combating exclusion and discrimination of any kind. It is therefore necessary, at a theoretical level, to take it for granted that the Union and all its member states implement practices aimed at favoring the harmonization of social systems. Concretely, however, we find that the applied procedures neglect the approximation of the issued administrative documents and any kind of common methodology, as long as a report is not regulated or applied at the national level that reproduces the conclusions of the verification of the professional skills of the employee at the end of the trial period. We propose in this article a substantiated analysis of the methods of termination of trial periods, so that the termination of employment contracts concluded during the trial period exclusively through a written notification, without notice and without any motivation, is no longer the concern of the courts, because the court cannot verify the existence or not of the professional aptitude in the absence of the presentation of some arguments by the employer that aim to fulfill or not within reasonable terms the assigned duties, certain difficulties in the service relationship or the degree of accommodation with the administrative and hierarchical system. Keywords: professional skills, trial period, report at the end of the trial period. JEL Classification: K23, K33 1. Trial period – legal treatment at national level According to the Labor Code, prior to the moment when the employee signs an individual employment contract, he must be informed by the employer about the duration of the trial period, but without denying that this procedure should also consist of an effective enumeration of "sought after" skills. However, this aspect is not encountered in current practice, and our documentation proved that the definition of the skills related to such a job is not identified and therefore not known even by the representatives of the employers who carry out the information of the future probationary employee. As such, you certainly cannot be properly informed before entering a trial period, without knowing the skills on the basis of which you will be evaluated during or at the end of it. Moreover, as an employee, you cannot continuously 3 improve yourself if you do not know the segment to which you need to make a correction, and this is even more so since the provisions of article 192 para. (1) of the Labor Code enshrines as the main objective of professional training "the adaptation of the employee to the requirements of the position or workplace". From the respective moment of signing the contract, the future employee, eager only to conclude the employment contract, is automatically placed in a position of disadvantage, a position that is really strengthened when the employment relationship concluded under these conditions, is notified without reason but with a targeted purpose concluded Camelia Daciana Stoian - „Aurel Vlaicu” University of Arad, Romania, . Eugenia Iovănaș - „Aurel Vlaicu” University of Arad, Romania, . 3 See Order no. 64 of February 28, 2003 for the approval of the framework model of the individual employment contract, respectively the provisions of the Labor Code that regulate the right of access to professional training, to the updating of knowledge and skills specific to the position and workplace and the improvement of professional training for the basic occupation (articles 39, 192). 1 2 Perspectives of Law and Public Administration Volume 11, Issue 3, October 2022 428 in the idea that the professional skills of the employee are inadequate in relation to the job requirements. Following the expressed will of the national legislator (art. 31 para. 1 of the Labor Code), precisely for the purpose of concluding on the existence or not of the professional skills of the employee, the trial period of up to 90 or 120 calendar days was established, the distinction being made between executive and management functions (the exception is for disabled persons for whom the trial period is up to 30 calendar days). Thus, if the trial period has been established for a specific purpose, namely to check certain skills, it is appropriate that these be defined and expressly brought to the knowledge of the employee at the time of prior information to the signing of the employment contract. We appreciate that only in this way can they be fully aware as evidence of standardized professional skills in correlation with the environment of exercising a certain professional qualification, which would ultimately outline an honest assessment of the employee's ability to exercise the regulated profession in question. Moreover, the written notification, unmotivated, without notice 4 can be the subject of a question from the former employee based on the provisions of the Regulation on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data, as long as this document is determined in issuing elements that define the person directly or indirectly5. So, to the natural question "what are those defining elements of the person corresponding to the position?", what can be answered? Since the case study addressed is placed as part of the area of public administration in a European context, we consider it necessary to clarify that we have analyzed the provisions of the Labor Code and not the Administrative Code, based on the status of the categories of budgetary personnel to whom the provisions do not apply regarding civil servants 6, categories that include contractual staff from public authorities/institutions in charge of administrative activities, staff from health units or autonomous governments or national companies and societies, without the enumeration being limiting. Precisely on the basis of this aspect, I considered that it is necessary that the researched problem should be nuanced in relation to the issue determined at the level of the courts, aligne (...truncated)