Brussels, 06/10/2000 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has insisted on securing the additional positions, as well as other measures for 2001 and will raise the issue before the General Affairs Council (see pages 8 and 9). President Romano Prodi intends personally raising the awareness of Foreign Ministers to the significance of these requests, that the Budget Council has mostly rejected, the Budgetary Committee and the Permanent Representatives of Member states (Coreper) having proposed rejecting some and only partially retaining others.
According to the Budgetary Committee, the Council should only agree to the creation of 280 positions instead of the requested 400. Concerning the second chapter of the Commission's proposal, i.e., the gradual dismantling of the Technical Assistance Bureaux, the representatives of the Member States propose refusing the Commission's creation of 100 permanent positions and using the credits earmarked for external staff. The Budgetary Committee does, however, propose accepting, for some twenty programmes, that credits earmarked for the Technical Assistance Bureaux should be used to pay temporary agents, who would work within the Commission. Finally, the Budgetary Committee proposes refusing the creation of the budgetary heading earmarked to finance the early retirement scheme that the Commission intends proposing. The Commission would like to create a heading, for now without credits, that would be funded as civil servants depart on early-retirement, by the remuneration of these former officials, and which would be earmarked to fund this early retirement scheme.
The Commission presented these plans early September, in an amending letter to the draft budget 2001, exclusively devoted to its internal reform. The Council announced that it intended deciding on this letter in October, so that its position would be known before the first reading of the budget in Parliament, in the week of 23 October.
Commissioner Kinnock's discussions in the EcoFin Council last Friday on the overall cost of the Commission's internal reform had, say some observers, enabled threats to be withdrawn from different quarters of blocking all discussion in the amending letter for 2001 (EUROPE of 27 September, p.15). Several Member States had placed this threat in the balance in order to secure explantions and assurances on the cost of the reform, notably the reform of the remuneration system and pension scheme, reform that the Commission wants to put back two years, and for which many capitals fear the cost.