(1)

The Office for the Administration and Payment of Individual Entitlements (PMO) of the European Commission is responsible for the administration and payment of individual financial entitlements of staff of the European Commission and, by way of service-level agreements, certain other Union institutions and bodies. As regards staff of the General Secretariat of the Council (GSC), the PMO is responsible for the administration and payment of pension rights and sickness insurance benefits. In those fields, the PMO exercises powers of the appointing authority and the authority empowered to conclude contracts of employment, except with regard to the handling of individual complaints concerning sickness insurance benefits. The PMO also provides a growing number of other services and makes available its IT tools to the GSC.

(2)

Management of individual entitlements by a single specialised body has proven to be more effective and cost-efficient. It allows for the uniform application of the Staff Regulations of Officials of the European Union (‘the Staff Regulations’) and the Conditions of Employment of Other Servants of the European Union (‘the Conditions of Employment’) throughout the institutions, thus ensuring equal treatment of and enhancing legal certainty for Union civil servants. It also allows for further administrative simplification and interinstitutional cooperation.

(3)

In this context, the GSC and the PMO are to sign a service-level agreement (‘SLA’) extending the scope of services provided by the PMO to the administration and payment of individual pecuniary entitlements of staff through Sysper, a human resources IT management tool. In order to allow for the proper functioning of the agreement, the exercise of relevant powers conferred on the appointing authority and on the authority empowered to conclude contracts of employment for GSC staff should be entrusted to the European Commission (PMO). Furthermore, as the new SLA replaces a previous service-level agreement on pension rights, unemployment allowances and other entitlements upon termination of service, the PMO's powers in that field should be confirmed.

(4)

In the initial transitional period after the transfer to Sysper, the appointing authority and the authority empowered to conclude contracts of employment of the Council should be able to exercise the powers in relation to GSC staff in cases where a possible different interpretation of rules on individual entitlements applied by the PMO compared to the interpretation applied in the GSC prior to the transfer to Sysper could have detrimental effects for GSC staff,