Brussels, 25/03/2002 (Agence Europe) - The Enlargement Task Force of the Council's Secretariat General, set in place last October and chaired by Vittorio Griffo, Director General for the Administration, recently presented its "report on the administrative consequences of enlargement" to the Member States, which should discuss it in the context of 2003 budgetary procedure. It clearly results that the presumed accession of up to ten new Member States in 2004 will have "an immense impact", whether it is a question of major challenges to be raised and essential reforms to be implemented in a renewed Union, the reinforcement of human resources, equipment and infrastructure that will obviously be necessary or less perceptible changes that come about in the work culture and administrative practices. The authors of the report used as a basis the hypothesis that the accession treaties of a group of ten candidates will be signed by mid-2003, and that the accessions will take place as of 1 January 2004. The Task Force also stated the principle that the full multilingualism currently existing in the EU will be maintained. It is therefore admitted that there will be ten new official languages.
If one were to apply the same method as for earlier accessions, without adjustment, the number of new posts necessary at the Council secretariat would be around 1,320 and 1,420, that is, a 51% rise in personnel. Given the very considerable cost of such staff increases, the Task Force urges for a "controlled method" and for application of "better practices" allowing the administrative impact of this enlargement to be brought down to the "strict minimum". In the field of languages, for example, the Council Secretariat ("while continuing to respect the EU's full multilingual regime") should translate into the new official languages only those documents considered as "essential", namely legislative documents and documents intended for the Councils and the European Council. In addition, the Secretariat would make greater use of translation methods such as the "relay" and "two-way translation" methods (Ed. Interpreters would no longer only translate towards their mother tongue). Furthermore, as far as possible, it would be necessary to develop the use of a reduced number of languages for administrative purposes at the internal level, said the Task Force report. Rigorous application of the "controlled method" should allow the Secretariat to reduce the number of new posts required to a total of 674, that is, less than half of the 1,320 or 1,420, otherwise necessary. The Task Force, however, specifies that this figure of 674 does not take into account the increase in staff that could prove necessary because of developing Council activity.
The report also highlights the fact that some specific tasks incumbent upon the Council secretariat should be carried out before accession of new members in 2004, namely, the establishment, in each of the new official languages: - of accession treaties (plus annexes); - and acquis communautaire at the date of accession. The Council's recruitment policy should take this into account during 2002 and 2003. At any rate, all the additional lawyer-linguists necessary for this enlargement should be recruited in 2002, stresses the Task Force. The Council infrastructures (premises, etc.) should also be adjusted: the Council secretariat considers that the additional needs with regards premises should be around 70,000 and 120,000 square metres. in gross superstructure, also taking into account the possibility of organising meetings of the European Council at Justus Lipsius as a temporary measure, following the Nice decision to hold all such meetings in Brussels from the time when the EU has 18 members.