Energy directorate shortstaffed after Berlaymont transfer season

The European Commission’s energy directorate-general, DG ENER, is struggling with a notable staffing shortfall after this year’s Berlaymont transfer season saw a higher-than-usual number of experienced officials rotate out to other departments, leaving key desks thinly covered at one of the most demanding moments in the EU’s energy policy history.

Sources familiar with the situation say that roughly 30 to 40 officials — many of them mid-level administrators and policy specialists — left DG ENER between October and December as part of the Commission’s routine internal mobility process. That’s not an unusual number in isolation. But the timing is brutal.

A hollowed-out house at the worst possible moment

DG ENER is currently responsible for steering some of the Commission’s most politically sensitive legislative work: the implementation of the revised Renewable Energy Directive, the ongoing overhaul of the EU’s electricity market design, and the continued management of emergency gas supply rules that were hastily assembled after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. These aren’t files that can sit idle while managers hunt for replacements.

The directorate is divided into several units covering electricity, gas, nuclear, and renewables, among others. According to two Commission officials who asked not to be named because they weren’t authorised to speak publicly, at least three of those units are currently operating with fewer than 60 percent of their standard complement of policy officers. One unit handling hydrogen and emerging energy technologies reportedly lost four of its six senior desk officers in a single transfer cycle.

“We’re asking people to cover files they didn’t work on six months ago,” said one official who recently joined from another directorate. “There’s institutional memory walking out the door, and it doesn’t come back quickly.”

Still, the Commission’s internal mobility system isn’t a bug — it’s a feature, at least officially. The policy is designed to prevent officials from becoming too entrenched in one portfolio, fostering cross-department experience and reducing the risk of regulatory capture. But critics inside the institution have long argued that the system doesn’t adequately account for the operational disruption it causes in high-demand directorates.

The Berlaymont shuffle and its structural tensions

The so-called “transfer season” happens twice a year, with the larger wave typically occurring in the autumn. Commission officials with five or more years in the same post are generally expected to move on, and those with certain grade levels face additional pressure to demonstrate cross-institutional mobility if they want promotion. The result, every autumn, is something resembling a game of musical chairs across the Berlaymont and surrounding buildings.

DG ENER has historically been a popular destination for officials wanting to work on high-profile, politically visible policy. But it’s also become an inadvertent training ground: officials get experience on energy files, build their CVs, and then get plucked by DG CLIMA, DG COMP, the Secretariat-General, or cabinet offices looking for people who understand the energy space.

And that’s the core tension. The very expertise that makes DG ENER officials attractive to other parts of the Commission is the expertise the directorate can least afford to lose. Senior energy policy officials who’ve spent years understanding the technical intricacies of balancing mechanisms, capacity markets, or LNG terminal access rules don’t grow on trees. Replacing them with generalist administrators — however talented — takes time that the EU’s energy transition schedule simply doesn’t allow for.

The directorate has reportedly sent formal requests to the Commission’s HR directorate, DG HR, asking for priority recruitment to fill the gaps. But the Commission’s hiring process is notoriously slow. Open competitions run by EPSO, the EU’s personnel selection office, can take 18 months or more from application to contract. Contract agents can be hired faster, but they come with their own limitations in terms of the responsibilities they can formally hold.

Policy consequences are already becoming visible

The staffing gaps aren’t just an internal administrative headache. They have real-world consequences for the pace of EU energy lawmaking. Two legislative consultations that were expected to open before the end of the first quarter of 2025 have been quietly pushed back, according to people tracking the files in Brussels. Industry groups and member state officials who regularly engage with DG ENER have noticed longer response times and fewer working-level meetings being scheduled.

The delays matter because the Commission is already under pressure to show progress on the Energy Union’s second implementation phase under the new college that took office in late 2024. Commissioner-level ambitions on topics like offshore wind permitting, smart grids, and the hydrogen economy all depend on the technical groundwork being laid by DG ENER staff who are, right now, stretched thin.

The Commission has said it’s committed to addressing internal resource allocation, though no specific timeline for filling the gaps has been publicly confirmed.

Whether the institution can patch those gaps fast enough to keep the EU’s energy agenda on track remains an open question — and one that lobbyists, member state capitals, and industry federations are watching with growing unease.