[en] Since there will be operating NPPs in Germany for about 20 years, it is necessary to preserve the appropriate competence in industry as well as with the authorities and the TSOs. Because of early retirement programmes of the utilities and minor reductions of manpower in the NPPs, there is a potential risk of degradations of the existing level of technical qualification within the NPPs. A fast replacement of the retired NPP staff by young engineers, technicians or craftsmen, can create a common problem. There are some small hints, that a relative fast replacement of staff in some utilities has contributed to unexpected events during the last 2 years in German NPPs. Therefore it is necessary to observe carefully developments and trends in plant performance also in the future. The regulatory bodies have started some initiatives to observe more closely manning and technical qualification situation in the German NPPs as in the past. The situation looks even more difficult for the authorities and in particular the TSOs as young engineers are not willing to work in the nuclear field due to the perspectives. Nevertheless, substitutions of retiring staff are meanwhile necessary after a long period of personnel reduction. As the peak in the age structure of the employees is at an age of nearly 60 years, it is a very urgent matter to care for the preservation of competence. The problem has been realized and first steps are going to be taken, e.g. loss of competence analysis, organization of training courses and updating of existing training material, elaboration of a training concept for initial training. The deregulation in the energy market has led to efforts for cost reduction by the utilities. One of the possibilities for cost reduction which was taken into account was the reduction of costs for the NPP personnel. In this context 3 ways were considered: reduction of the absolute staff figure; substitution of old staff members by young ones; outsourcing. The responsible authorities watched this development very carefully in order to avoid a decrease in competence in the NPPs. With regard to nuclear safety there is a necessity to keep with the NPP staff sufficient competence for a number of functions and subfunctions, i.e. special functions, so-called core functions, must not be performed by external personnel. Examples of such core functions are: operation of NSSS and safety systems; planning of preventive maintenance; maintenance of the operation manual; plant surveillance with regard to radiation protection, physics, chemistry; evaluation of operation experience. Accordingly a sufficient number of qualified NPP personnel is necessary for the safe operation of the plant. Whereas the qualification for various relevant staff positions is laid down in special guidelines, there is a lack of regulations with regard to the minimum number of technical NPP personnel required for safe operation. In a recent experts' report an attempt was made to specify the requisite number of qualified personnel needed to fulfil core competencies important for ensuring safe operation. Because of very different NPP organizations the report does not assume a given organizational structure but is rather oriented to work processes and associated (core) functions. The report presents rough figures for the personnel related to various combined core competencies. However, a correlation of core functions with numbers of personnel qualified on different levels is not given. A compilation of such information from the IAEA member states could be helpful for further discussions. IAEA-TECDOC-1052 'Nuclear power plant organization and staffing for improved performance: lessons learned' gives few information in this context. The given information is only of little use because the associated boundary conditions are not described. In Germany the NPP personnel is roughly subdivided in two categories: The responsible personnel comprising the management, special officers and the upper shift personnel; Persons otherwise engaged in the operation of an NPP. Persons caring for technical, maintenance and surveillance tasks as well as the administration or security personnel belong to the second category. The guidelines related to the qualification and training of responsible personnel have been updated several times during the past years. A revision of the 'Guideline Related to the Assurance of the Necessary Knowledge of the Persons Otherwise Engaged in the Operation of Nuclear Power Plants' was issued in November 2000. The former version of this guideline, which was also the first one, goes back to Oct. 1980. Investigations of the overall practical implementation of this first version led to some additional prescriptions with regard to the necessary knowledge of e.g. task-controlling personnel or task personnel. A basic frame of the necessary levels of knowledge in the various groups of knowledge (radiological protection, fire protection, industrial safety, plant know-how) is laid down for these groups of personnel. In addition some topics in the groups of knowledge have been a little bit modified and rearranged. Furthermore, some basic requirements concerning the qualification and training of task personnel were added