New buildings strategy on cards

Date: 27/06/1996

By Rory Watson

THE European Commission is trying to restore its battered image in Brussels and achieve better value for money by introducing a comprehensive buildings policy for its staff for the first time.

After years of taking an ad hoc approach, which has led to a heavy concentration of officials in the Rond-Point Schuman area of Brussels and turned it into a semi-permanent building site, the Commission is now looking to put a longer-term strategy into place.

“The political message is that we must reduce the number of people in this area. To be credible, we need three centres for staff in Brussels. This policy is important for people in the neighbourhood, for the environment and for the image of the European Union,” explained Personnel Commissioner Erkki Liikanen.

With Brussels confirmed as the permanent seat of the Commission, officials argue that the time has come to end the improvisation which has been the hallmark of much of the past two decades as staff numbers have grown with the increase in Union membership.

The Commission's decision follows years of mounting criticism from local residents over noisy building work and a blight on property caused by the heavy involvement of the Parliament, the Council of Ministers and Commission in costly projects to construct or renovate their headquarters.

Over the next decade, the Commission estimates that its staff in Brussels will increase from last year's 17,500 to 19,660 by 2005, and from just over 3,000 to 3,560 in Luxembourg.

The Commission is - for the first time - considering ways in which it might own, rather than merely rent, premises.

Although it occupies almost 60 separate sites in Brussels, the institution owns just three buildings in the city: its Breydel headquarters, the 130 rue de la Loi premises of the agriculture directorate-general and the Commission kitchens.

While acknowledging the tight budgetary restrictions now facing the Union, senior officials maintain that, in the long run, owning certain buildings would provide better value for money.

The Commission is currently investigating what form of financing would be the most appropriate and is expected to propose that this be included in annual EU budgets from 1998.

Under current plans, the Commission is aiming to group as many of its external relations departments as possible in the Council of Ministers' former Charlemagne headquarters once the building is renovated next year. It is also expected to assemble its core services - Commissioners and their Cabinets, the secretariat-general, legal and spokesman's services, the protocol and security offices, and a further 1,000 officials - in the refurbished Berlaymont from 2000 or 2001.

“For a range of urban, transportation, environmental and budgetary reasons we must decentralise our offices. We need to cut down on the number of cars and introduce urban considerations into our policies. We are not doing

this for reasons of prestige,” explains Liikanen.

The Commission is keen to develop its new three-centre strategy in close contact with the Brussels and Belgian authorities, and maintains it has an open mind on the site of the third centre to complement the existing premises in the Rond-Point Schuman and Beaulieu areas. Possible options are around the Gare du Nord and Gare du Midi railway stations.

But as the Commission tries to gaze into the future, it acknowledges that the situation could continue to change.

The present analysis takes no account of developments which might emerge from the Intergovernmental Conference, or of the influence which technology and changing work patterns could have on its need for office space.