Strasbourg, 25/01/2000 (Agence Europe) - After his press conference on Wednesday in Strasbourg (see EUROPE of 20 January, p.9), European Commission Vice-President Neil Kinnock presented the main lines of the strategy for European Commission reform to the Conference of Presidents of the European Parliament (Parliament President Nicole Fontaine and the presidents of the political groups) - enlarged to the EP Bureau (vice-presidents of the Parliament and Quaestors).
EUROPE has reason to believe that Mr Kinnock presented to MEPs certain elements of this reform as a challenge that the Parliament should be ready to raise in future. Such is the case, for example, regarding the effectiveness of allocating and using budgetary resources and assessing work by the staff of the European institutions according to merit, questions on which Neil Kinnock called for a reaction from MEPs, and asking them whether they were ready to make the "tough choices" required in the future? Is the Parliament, which is also an employer, able to apply only the criteria of merit? Is it willing, moreover, to take measures to protect the "whistle-blowers", those who pull the alarm bell in the case of fraud or presumed abuse?
President of the Socialist Group, Mr Baron, felt for his part that the Parliament should not have too much difficulty in supporting a timetable for reform, but he would like to make his own assessment of the Commission strategy. Mr Kinnock pointed out that the Commission will also take into account certain recommendations of the van Hulten report approved by Parliament last week (see EUROPE of 21 January, p.11). The president of the EPP Group, Mr Pöttering, affirmed for his part that it is no doubt a good thing to want to make the Commission the best administration of the world (as Mr Prodi and Mr Kinnock say they wish to do), but that a little modesty would not be a bad thing either. Mr Kinnock replied that, if the Commission has such an ambition, its is because this lives up to citizens' expectations.
Reservation concerning the "ethics committee"
A proposal that is generally highly challenged by MEPs was that of setting in place an ethics committee. While British Conservative Mr Provan, one of the fourteen Parliament vice-presidents, said he was in favour of such a body, most of the other participants expressed more or less frank reservation, and Mr Baron said that these terms brought to mind the dark times of the Inquisition. Regarding the exclusively merit-based assessment of European officials, several MEPs asked who would judge merit, noting that the arbitrary nature of such judgements can never be ruled out altogether.