Commissioners attack EU’s paper mountain

Date: 28/11/1996

The Commission has launched an impressive fight back against claims that it does not use one word when 100 will do.

Verbosity and paper waste have been sent scurrying for cover by none other than President Jacques Santer, who single-handedly agreed to tackle 30 written questions directed at the Commission by British Socialist MEP Peter Crampton.

Crampton had queries on everything from fish and finance to regional policy and the Intergovernmental Conference - and he managed to occupy six sides of A4 with his thoughts.

Santer decided the buck stopped with him - and managed to respond in less than one side of paper.

The president was acting not a moment too soon: if latest reports are to be believed, some Commissioners are at breaking point over the paper mountain.

Take Karel van Miert, for instance. Too much paperwork prompted him to lose his cool earlier this month. The normally urbane Belgian peered over a mounting stack of regional aid requests from Germany and told the nation's economics minister Gunter Rexrodt what he could do with them.

This all happened behind closed doors, but sources close to the coffee machine have revealed that Van Miert received one visit too many to his Brussels office as part of the German lobbying campaign to cover more of the country in regional fund cash.

Van Miert made the point that enough was enough, brandishing file after file of heavy casework from Germany, containing documents, petitions and pleas from the German regions for extra cash for the poor and needy.

No doubt with one eye on Rexrodt's government limousine outside, the alloy wheels of which alone are worth enough to help offset unemployment blight in the German industrial heartland, Van Miert threw each file, one by one, on the floor at Rexrodt's feet.

Rexrodt was left with no option but to stoop to the floor of the Commissioner's office and pick them all up.

The confrontation ended in victory for Van Miert: when industry ministers finalised the latest regional fund programme, no new German territories were included.