Success judged on expectations more than performance

Date: 30/05/1996

By Michel Ehrlich

THE European Commission, like most public institutions, is always under scrutiny for how well it does its job, and its environment service, DGXI, receives at least its fair share of critical attention.

Discussions on how well Environment Commissioner Ritt Bjerregaard and her team in DGXI are performing, however, usually reveal a wide range of expectations as to what the institution is supposed be doing and are as often as not based on personal wishes rather than on disinterested assessment.

Some are looking for radical environmental protection, others are keen on a smoothly functioning single market and there are always those who would prefer to see DGXI doing nothing at all.

“Performance” has often been judged on how many legislative proposals are presented in a given year. Using this measure, DGXI has not done especially well in recent years. Seven items from the 1994 or earlier work programmes were carried over into 1995. Of the ten proposals listed in the 1995 programme, only four (including the review of the Fifth Environmental Action Programme) appeared before the end of the year.

The 1996 work programme is, however, based on a more realistic assessment of what can be done by way of legislation and places a greater emphasis on policy papers. Only two new proposals are planned for 1996 in addition to four proposals from among those left over from previous years. DGXI officials say they hope to break the cycle of uncompleted work this year.

Meanwhile, there is certainly no glut of human resources in the Commission, which has to make extensive use of outside consultants as well as temporary personnel working in-house on fixed-term contracts.

While the Commission itself is thus a comparatively lean bureaucracy in terms of simple numbers, this has a negative impact on expertise levels and institutional memory.

The perpetual non-appearance of many proposals is due, quite simply, to the available staff being needed for higher-priority initiatives.

These in turn, however, sometimes seem to remain forever in the drafting stage. This is often due to the number and diversity of interested parties whose views must be taken into account if a draft is to be forwarded to other directorates-general with a reasonable chance of emerging from interservice consultation in a recognisable form. Perhaps most frustrating of all to DGXI is insufficient cooperation from member states, whose contributions are essential for drafting politically viable proposals.

Somewhat more subjective than simply measuring quantity of output are assessments of how well DGXI does its work.

Opinions on this depend on what the various critics would like to see the institution doing. Environmentalists say that DGXI is barely even trying to protect the environment; that it has succumbed to a “techno-managerial ethos”, practises “lowest-common-denominator” green policy and has become confused as to its raison d'être. Some in industry, on the other hand, still see it as a nest of green radicalism with neither a grasp of, nor a concern for, economic realities.

DGXI does indeed occasionally present a proposal with which no one is happy - a prominent recent example being the review of the Fifth Environmental Action Programme.

The complaint, however, that the Commission is an ivory tower where policy is made by a coterie of bureaucrats isolated from the realities of the world is fairly wide of the mark. In fact, most officials involved in drafting proposals spend a great deal of time in consultation with those parties “on the ground” who are likely to be affected by the legislation or who have some other specific interest in a proposal's outcome.

Although in the last couple of years environmental policy has lost a little of its political cachet, its role in the long run will become more important than ever.

Michel Ehrlich is the editor of 'EU Environmental Issue Manager'