Brussels, 30/07/2001 (Agence Europe) - According to a report by the European Commission concerning the preparation by the Community institutions for the accession of the next candidate countries, the two main administrative changes that will occur will be: - (1) the measures to be taken to recruit and integrate new civil servants and (2) the linguistic aspects, especially the translation of 90,000 pages of the Community acquis and the strengthening of translator and interpreter teams. According to a Commission spokesperson, enlargement could require, according to the provisional estimates (accession of 10 countries from Central and Eastern Europe on 1 January 2004), recruitment of 2,400 civil servants over a ten year period, while taking into account the development of the following elements: - the pace of enlargement; - the analysis of the types of activities that could disappear (competences linked to pre-accession aid); - the study of activities that will grow such as Common Agricultural Policy or Structural policy). Furthermore, Commission offices will be established in the capitals of the candidate countries in order to help them translate the Community texts and to check their exactitude. The report also adds that funds will be earmarked to help these countries codify the Community legislative texts before the end of 2005 and that all the specialised software used by the Institutions will have to be updated in order to take into account the ten new languages in the Community. It will also require creating two new "European schools" (in Brussels and Luxembourg).
A the end of the year, the Commission will under take a precise analysis of the needs and launch in mid-2002 a strategy for the recruitment and selections of new members of the personnel (notably in view of the creations, on 1 January 2003, of the Inter-Institutional Selection Office). Selection procedures will be launched as soon as the accession treaties have been signed, in order to enable the new civil servants to being integrating the Community institutions on the date of accession. In its preliminary draft budget 2002, the Commission included (for all the Institutions) a credit line for EUR 20 million to tackle its various preparatory activities.