Agencies ‘no panacea’ warns Kallas

By Tim King

Date: 24/05/06

The creation of semi-independent agencies to carry out the work of the Commission has duplicated costs and blurred lines of accountability, Siim Kallas, the European commissioner for administration, has admitted.

His warning comes just a week before the Commission is to update its guidelines on the use of executive agencies, which were introduced as part of the reforms made by Romano Prodi's Commission.

They were intended to address earlier problems with technical assistance offices. Since last year, the Commission has introduced executive agencies for its programmes in intelligent energy, public health, and education, audiovisual and culture.

EU leaders have also agreed to set up a number of independent agencies, such as an air safety agency, a maritime safety agency, a railway agency and a chemicals agency.

Kallas admitted that the reforms introduced after fraud and cronyism scandals had not been wholly successful.

He said that the Commission had tried to distinguish between policy design and implementation tasks. "Implementation was moved to various offices and agencies semi-independent of the Commission," he said, with the aim of leaving the centre "free to concentrate on the core tasks and important strategic thinking". Meanwhile the agencies would be able to employ "less skilled and less expensive staff".

But Kallas said: "In practice, we have found that the boundary between policy and implementation is fuzzy and that it is very difficult to insulate the Commission from the consequences of failings in the agencies. Further there are inefficiencies. Agencies tend to recreate core support services - finance and HR for example - that were previously provided by the Commission. And their management boards tend to blur the lines of accountability. So agencies are certainly no panacea." Kallas was speaking in New York at the EU studies centre of City University, while on a visit to the United Nations.

Comments by the European Commissioner for Administrative Affairs, Siim Kallas, on the performance of European Commission executive agencies. Kallas said that the creation of these semi-independent agencies to carry out the work of the Commission had duplicated costs and blurred lines of accountability.