Just been to the homepage of the LBA (Luftfahrtbundesamt) to look up some technical stuff.
They are advertising that they want to hire 200 new staff into both their head office in Braunschweig and into some of their regional offices spread across Germany. I cannot see from the text whether these are new/additional jobs or re-staffing of existing positions.
Would you be interested to join the LBA as you have an interest in aviation and want to help to make things better? Forget it!
These jobs are only open to surplus staff from other administrations (and not even all of them, the list is very, very restricted) and soldiers of the German army (again, further restrictions apply).
While I think it is good that the LBA is hiring as some of their departments take in excess of half a year to turn things around which could get done in 20 minutes for the indicidual act, I wonder how successful they are going to be with the restrictions mentioned above and how much competence in all things aviation related they are going to attract.
As a side note: The DWD, German Weather Service, is trying to hire Meteorologists. These jobs are also only open to applicants surplus from other administrations. It does make one wonder how many meteorologists might be hidden somewhere in our administrations which have nothing to do with weather at all.
Wasn't the idea of EASA to move responsibility to Europe and have less redundant responsibility in the national CAAs? Why has the LBA been increasing the headcount ever since then?
When the German government privatized ATC (DFS) by transforming it into a profit oriented business (which they were denied to sell off by the Constitutional Court lateron), they also established a Federal Oversight Agency for Air Traffic Control (Bundesaufsichtsamt für Flugsicherung -- BAF). Now that the DFS staff are no longer direct government workers, additional government workers are required (a complete agency) to supervise these people.
Crazy, isn't it?
