Spain's new decree ties civil servants' jobs to performance evaluations

The decree tying civil servants' positions to an exam

Firing a public employee now has a legal door. However, the vast majority of those who read it will not cross it. The approved royal decree-ley—170 pages long, according to the circulating count—introduces performance evaluation with an effect previously absent from daily office life: job continuity. That is the noise. The rest, including what happens to the payslip, is discussed later.

What Article 119 says and why it sounds like a warning

The text is explicit. Performance evaluation will have effects on five fronts: perception of variable complementary remuneration, pogre in the career path, criteria for filling posts, job continuity, and assessment of training needs. Three of these effects are no revolution: variable pay and promotions are already negotiated, and senior posts have long been filled by free appointment. The fourth is what shifts the system's foundation.

And it is not a new idea. The Basic Statute of the Public Employee, from 2007, already obliged administrations to define the effects of evaluation on career pogre, training, and post allocation. Sixteen years later, what changes is not the concept: it is that permanence enters the same package.

Can a career civil servant be fired now?

Yes, and no new decree was needed for that. Current regulations provide for the loss of civil servant status, which is a dismissal without possible reinstatement, as well as suspension of duties for up to one year. The Official State Gazette records such resolutions, including separations from the judiciary, which is hardly the body with the most shielding. The requirement was a serious cause and a procedure with judicial review. The novelty is that now it is intended that insufficient performance alone will suffice.

The exam corrected by the shift boss

Here begins the real problem. An evaluation means individual evaluation: same parameters for the same post and function. If criteria are tailored to each person, arbitrariness is evident and the administrative appeal arrives before the grade. The discussion is not whether evaluation is legitimate, but who drafts the items and who grades them. If the direct superior grades and the staff is examined as a group, what several forum users anticipate is a general ten and another formality. In healthcare, it is already done and, according to a participant, is not exactly an example of rigor.

Where the rush comes from: Brussels and interim staff

The most repeated argument in the thread points outside Spain. According to several forum users, approving this rule was a condition for continuing to receive European funds, and that origin explains the rush and the decree-ley format. In parallel, the only thing committed to Brussels, according to a link shared in the debate, is to make permanent the long-term interim staff who have been stringing contracts for years. The result is amusing: first, interims are consolidated and then subjected to evaluation. This contrast is what makes many think the calendar is not set by Madrid.

The cut (or raise) traveling in the payslip

There are two readings and they are incompatible. The first maintains that this is a hidden salary cut: without touching fixed amounts, cuts are made where it hurts, in complementary remuneration, and no one wins a lawsuit over a grade. The second maintains the opposite, that it is a hidden raise for those who pass the hoop and become the exemplary employee the administration wants to reward. Both can be true at once, depending on who gets the evaluator.

Indra, know-how, and the trap of outsourcing

Beneath the decree runs another issue the text does not name: outsourcing. Internal services that worked smoothly start to show problems when work is outsourced, and the pattern repeats: twenty people pass through one project, each does their part, and in the end no one knows what was done because no one left knows it anymore. In-house know-how is not contracted by the hour. And no, artificial intelligence does not solve a rural cadastral file, no matter how much the contrary is sold.

The disconcerting detail is that the legal way to fire a public employee has existed before this decree and, judging by the thread's testimonials, in three decades it has barely been used. With these reeds, the reasonable prediction is that dismissal will remain exceptional and that the real effect will be felt in the payslip and promotions. If criteria are homogeneous and public, the rule will remain a costly formality. If margin is left to each boss's judgment, the position will remain lifelong and what will change is who the complement smiles at.