EPO staff to hold third demo in as many months

A third demonstration in as many months will be held at the European Patent Office (EPO) next week.

Certain staff members will stage the demonstration to tie in with the latest meeting of the office’s supervisory body, the Administrative Council (AC).

The protest, planned for Wednesday (March 25), will take place in front of the office’s Isar building in Munich at 12.30pm local time.

It will be the third demonstration since the turn of the year.

At the AC meeting, due to be held between March 25 and 26, members will discuss proposed changes to staff rules including sick leave.

Under apparent new proposals, EPO staff would get only three days of sick leave per year that they do not need to account for. After that, every single day of sick leave would allegedly have to be certified by evidence.

A new requirement for an employee who is on sick leave to be at his or her place of residence from 10am to 12pm and 2pm and4pm has also apparently been proposed.

Previous demonstrations, held in January and February, have seen staff march from the EPO’s office in Munich and congregate outside the city’s Danish Embassy and  British Consulate-General.

Those demonstrations were held to protest against the British and Danish representatives on the AC, which is comprised of representatives from each EPO member state.

This latest demonstration is aimed in particular at the German delegation on the AC.

“As the representatives of a host country and of one of the founding member states, the German delegation has a special responsibility towards EPO staff,” the EPO’s staff union SUEPO said in a statement.

It added: “Staff at the EPO reproach the German delegation that it has thus far uncritically supported all previous reforms that in various ways infringed staff’s fundamental rights to freedom of speech, freedom of association, inviolability of the home, and other.”

The EPO did not respond to a request for comment.