Prodi seeks to end ‘jobs-for-life’ culture within the Commission

Date: 22/07/1999

By Simon Taylor

INCOMPETENT European Commission officials could be sacked or demoted and the blatant 'flagging' of jobs for certain nationalities outlawed under staff reform plans floated by Romano Prodi.

In a bid to end the Commission's widely criticised 'jobs-for-life' culture, the incoming president has suggested that probationary periods could be introduced for the top-level civil servants who run the institution's 24 directorates-general.

Senior officials say the move is designed to weed out able technocrats who lack managerial ability. "We have appointed people who are very good technically but are not good managers," said one. "It is very hard to get rid of them because you cannot prove that they are technically incompetent."

Under the current rules, directors-generals and their deputies do not have to undergo a trial period, although the performance of staff on lower grades is reviewed nine months after they take up a new job to decide whether they should remain in the post.

Despite the far-reaching implications of the changes being considered by Prodi, his aims are broadly supported by the staff unions, who have been reassured by a written pledge from the president-designate that he will not attempt to cut their salaries as part of his reform drive.

His support will be crucial to the unions if, as expected, the institution comes under intense pressure from some EU governments to change their members' existing pay and conditions when a ten-year agreement on salaries and pensions is renegotiated next year.

However, staff representatives question whether probationary periods are the best way to root out incompetent officials. "I do not see the advantage of a probationary period if it is six months," said Brendan Ryan, vice-president of Union Syndicale, the Commission's biggest staff union. "Can you really figure out if a person is good within that time?"

He argues that rules already exist for dismissing or demoting officials who fail to do their jobs properly, but these have not been used in the past, partly for political reasons.

Under the changes being considered by Prodi, sanctions for failing to meet the Commission's management standards would range from dismissal, if the official concerned had come from outside the institution, to demotion if he or she had been promoted internally.

Prodi broached the idea of probationary periods for A1 and A2 grade officials during last weekend's informal get-together for his chosen team of Commissioners. Precise proposals will be drawn up by the end of this year by Prodi and his Vice-President-designate for internal reform Neil Kinnock.

The new president also wants to end the discredited system under which senior Commission posts are allocated on the basis of nationality. A senior official said plans to tighten up the procedures for interviewing A1 and A2 grade staff would ensure that high quality candidates could not be rejected on the basis of nationality alone.

"In the future we will have to find a way of loosening the system of national quotas because it is at odds with the principle of finding the best person for the job," said a senior official.

Prodi's bid to challenge the entrenched quota system faces an early test over the appointment of a new director-general for the expanded enlargement service, which will manage relations with the 13 countries bidding for EU membership.

Officials say Klaus van der Pas, the current German head of the enlargement task force, is unlikely to get the job because the French are entitled to it under the unofficial system of rotating key posts between big member states and because of Prodi's decision to appoint Günter Verheugen as Enlargement Commissioner. François Lamoureux, the deputy director-general for external political relations who narrowly lost out to Van Der Pas in the race to become the first head of the enlargement task force, has now emerged as a strong candidate.