Brussels, 05/12/2000 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament has provided its backing for the proposals for the administrative reform of the European Commission, while stressing that it was waiting to see these proposals actually implemented, and leveling criticisms as well as making proposals. Parliament presented its point of view by adopting four reports at last week's plenary session: that of Catherine Guy-Quint (Committee on the Budgets), José Javier Pomés Ruiz (Budgetary Control), Alain Lamassoure (Constitutional Affairs), and Malcolm Harbour (Legal Affairs).
Catherine Guy-Quint, whose report "provides firm support for the Commission in its efforts at reform and modernisation", opened the debate by recalling that the reform had to be "clear, explained, and all the personnel involved in it", so as to "restore public confidence, and ensure that we arrive at a public service of excellence". Javier Pomes Ruiz, who "backs the proposals submitted by the Commission while remaining vigilant as their actual implementation", "welcomed the fact that the proposals of the White Paper take on board a very large part of the recommendations of the second report of the Committee of Independent Experts". The rapporteur for the Committee on Budgetary Control stressed that "a new culture and sense of responsibility needs creating at all levels. This will have to heighten the level of responsibility in the services, without for that forgetting that the Commissioners and Commission President remain politically responsible". For Malcolm Harbour, "the most important thing is to define the reform strategy", and not be "complacent". Finally, Alain Lamassoure hoped that the reform would ensure that the Commission was "strong, independent, efficient, transparent and politically responsible". During the debates, Commission Vice-President Mr. Kinnock welcomed the fact that the desire he had expressed, a year ago, "that the European Parliament and Commission sustain an alliance for reform" had been "achieved".
The reports place emphasis on the following issues, in their respective fields (with at times differences there where subjects overlap):
The Guy-Quint Report considers that "the reform should not be limited to a mathematical equation between tasks and resources, nor a dressing up of procedures, but must contribute to the consolidation of the European integration process through an in-depth reorganisation of the structures and methods so that the Commission fully assumes its responsibilities, especially regarding management, and can guarantee the optimal use of the financial resources it is credited with". Regarding this, the report criticises the absence, before the Commission presented its demands for additional staff for 2001 and 2002, of a "far-reaching political reflection" and an "overall assessment of existing tasks and new tasks, as well of the challenges to come, for example enlargement".
The report "welcomes the decisions taken by the Commission in the field of outsourcing" but underpins that the EP remains very attentive. The EP expects of the Commission "the respect of the timetable for dismantling the TABs" (technical assistance bureaux, to which the Commission handed certain tasks), which the Commission presented in July, and the presentation "without delay of a draft legal framework for the creation of Community execution agencies to as to limit to the maximum the transitional period". The Report also stresses that "financial management is the sole responsibility of the Commission", and thus calls for the "committees composed of representatives of Member States to have no decisional-making powers concerning management to avoid the intervention of national interests".
During the debate, Commissioner Schreyer answered a point raised by this report and that of Pomez Ruiz, i.e. the proposed abolition of the splitting of the budget into two major categories, operational spending and administrative spending, to move to the presentation of the budget by subject of activity. She said that the end of the separation between the two categories would not prevent them from knowing how much is allocated to administrative spending. "The administrative cost of each sector would appear, better to reflect political priorities and better detail costs", she added.
The Pomés Ruiz Report fully backs the introduction of a genuine "sense of responsibility" for officials who take decisions with a financial impact, as well as the abolition of all measures that actually discourage authorizing agents from assuming responsibility for the transactions they manage. It "strongly approves management by activity", and the prospects of examining the annual reports that will be made by each directorate general of its activities. The report criticises the fact that Parliament should simply be "consulted" on the reform of the financial regulation.
Finally, the Pomés Ruiz Report calls for the accounts clearance procedure to be extended "to all Community credits managed by its services". The so-called accounts-clearance procedure enables the Commission to recover Community aid that has been unduly received or that has not been adequately controlled by Member States. For now, it is applied only to agricultural spending.
The Harbour Report, devoted to the management of the careers of officials, goes as far as calling for the notion of job for life to "disappear". The report indeed calls for the "setting up of procedure applicable in case of persistent professional inadequacy (relocation, recycling or reclassification); and considers that the notion of a job for life, whatever the services, must disappear". This report also calls for direct hierarchical superiors to be able to stimulate staff by remuneration based on the quality of the work, in the framework of a codified system of premiums, and, as example, recommends the system currently applied in the ECB" (European Central Bank). The report also considers that "the overall remuneration must be competitive in relation to the public and private sectors", that the pay scheme must be "simple, clear, fair and transparent (…) without unwarranted advantages". It welcomes the Commission's will to apply the criterion of "merit" for recruitment and promotions. Malcolm Harbour said, when speaking in plenary, that "employment practices in the public and private sectors are converging because all these organisations want to be more open, more transparent."
The Lamassoure Report regrets the fact that the first stage of the Commission's reform "should not have been preceded by an in-depth reflection into the problem of European governance and reserves the right to check the consistency" of the White Paper on the Commission's internal reform with the White Paper on governance, that the Commission is to present in 2001. The Lamassoure Report turns to the role of the Commission: it "places emphasis on the need to hand the Commission the main role in the preparation of and follow-up to European Council meetings and all formations of Councils of Ministers". It also asks the Commission to itself apply the principle of governance be ensuring, before submitting a proposal, that it does indeed come within the EU competence. Finally, it calls for the White Paper to tackle the sharing of executing tasks with Member States, so that the "Commission manages as little as possible so as to be able to devote itself to impetus, coordination and control".
By adopting the Lamassoure Report, the EP also considers that "the High Representative (for Cfsp) should in the last resort come within the European Commission".