The European Ombudsman, Emily O'Reilly, shares the opinion of the European Parliament that the procedure that allowed Martin Selmayr, former head of cabinet of President Juncker, to become the Secretary General of the European Commission involved a manipulation of the staff regulations covering European civil servants.
O'Reilly is not calling for the appointment of a successor to Alexander Italianer, who announced on 20 February that he was stepping down from the position of Secretary General with the effect from 1 March, to be cancelled.
However, to avoid any future opaque appointments, the Ombudsman is advising the European institution to put together a “specific and separate appointment procedure for its Secretary General”, in the conclusions of the investigation she launched in May.
She considers that this specific procedure should involve the prior publication of a vacancy notice for the position to allow all interested and qualified parties to apply and for the appointment of the individual to be officially included on the agenda of a meeting of the College of Commissioners. Furthermore, the consultative committee involved in the procedure should include experts from outside the Commission.
In her report, the Ombudsman identifies four instances of maladministration that can be laid at the Commission's door in its express appointment of Selmayr in the spring (see EUROPE 12004), namely: - failure to take appropriate measures to avoid the risk of a conflict of interests arising from the involvement of Selmayr, then head of President Juncker's cabinet, in the procedure for the appointment of a Deputy Secretary General; - holding a selection procedure for Deputy Secretary General, essentially to qualify Selmayr to go on to apply for the Secretary General post; - the artificial creation of a situation of urgency in the need to replace Italianer at short notice.
In a press release, the Commissioner for Human Resources, Günther Oettinger, welcomes the fact that the Ombudsman “neither contests the legality of the appointment procedure of the Secretary General, nor the choice of the candidate”. Promising to reply to O'Reilly by the agreed deadline of early December, he stresses that the Commission “looks forward to reassessing (…) how the application of the current rules and procedures can be improved in the future and applied in the same manner to all institutions”. To this end, an “inter-institutional round table” will take place on Tuesday 25 September.
However, as for the recommendation concerning future appointments of Secretaries General of the Commission “at first glance we do not see any reason why the appointment of the Secretary General should be carried out independently from the appointment of any other Director General”, Oettinger said.
The French Socialist delegation to the European Parliament, which originated the complaint made to the Ombudsman, welcomed O'Reilly's report, as it shows that the procedure “was indeed arranged to allow Selmayr to become Deputy Secretary General, so that he could be immediately appointed Secretary General, in total violation of the European rules” (our translation). They refer to a Commission note dated 14:45 on 20 February, revealed by the Ombudsman, describing Selmayr as Deputy Secretary General, even though the other candidate for the position, Juncker's current head of cabinet, Clara Martinez, did not withdraw from the race until 14:58. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)