Brussels, 14/11/2001 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday, the European Commission adopted concrete measures concerning two major areas of its externalisation policy for Community programmes: the management of Community programmes through national agency networks (decentralisation) and the outsourcing of technical and administrative assistance in the execution of Community programmes.
The Commission adopted a communication by Michaele Schreyer defining the approach, the arrangements and the tools for managing certain Community policies through networks of national agencies designated by Member States. It mainly notes the need to ensure that contractors under private law do not carry out any task involving public power, or discretionary power. Ms Schreyer's document also presents areas where the management by national agencies may be extended such as statistics, research and structural funds. Hitherto, there was only one model for programmes relating to education, youth and training. A convention is also foreseen for specifying the respective tasks and responsibilities of the Commission and national agencies and which would strengthen the role of coordination, control and ex-post evaluation attributed to the Commission. The management by networks of national agencies is defined as decentralising executive responsibility to outside bodies under national law, public bodies or bodies invested with a public service mission under State guarantee, and which serve as partners for the implementation of certain Community policies, such as the Leonardo Programme.
The Commission has also set in place a vademecum and a model contract on outsourcing of technical and/or administrative assistance, in order to mobilise resources and skills that are lacking within its own staff. The idea underlying this approach is to achieve better control of and to allow more complete assessment of sub-contracting. The vademecum gives examples of tasks that could not be outsourced such as the clearance and authorisation of expenditure, legal and budgetary commitments, payments and recovery operations. The collection of data on the implementation of programmes, the provision of specialised IT services and the preparation of agreements and contracts may be externalised.
We recall that the Commission under Romano Prodi has pledged to remedy the bad management of the various Technical Assistance Bureaux (TAB) and refocus its administration on its essential missions and activities. Thus, the Commission has decided to phase out 99 of the existing 119 TABs and adopted concrete measures aimed at developing a coherent externalisation policy. In December 2000, the Commission had already tackled the "delegation" aspect of outsourcing by adopting a proposal of regulation on a new administrative body, the "executive agency". The latter would be a separate legal entity established by the Commission with an annual subsidy for its operating costs. It would be headed by a Commission official, specially set in place to carry out this function, and supervised by a steering committee appointed by the Commission. The adoption of this regulation, by the Council, is to take place in 2002.