All change at Commission HQ

Date: 15/07/1999

By Simon Taylor

THOUSANDS of European Commission staff will see their departments overhauled and hundreds will swap offices under the most radical shake-up of the institution in its 40-year history, ordered by incoming President Romano Prodi.

His aides have drawn up a detailed blueprint for reform setting out precisely how the number of departments will be cut from 42 to 36 and staff reassigned to the policy areas in greatest need of reinforcements.

Officials have set themselves a tentative year-end deadline for completing the restructuring, and internal discussions over which staff will have to move began this week.

The logistics will be intricate. Erkki Liikanen's new enterprise/ information society directorate-general groups together the old DGIII (industry) in the Rond-Point Schuman central EU district of Brussels, DGXXIII (enterprise/small companies) a kilometre away and parts of DGXIII's (telecommunications) 40-person innovation unit in Luxembourg.

Any attempt to remove staff from the Grand Duchy would require an amendment to a treaty protocol, which would have to be unanimously agreed by member states.

The building which will house the new 150-strong Directorate-General for justice and home affairs, under Commissioner-designate António Vitorino, is not even due for completion until January.

Significantly, at Frits Bolkestein's request, DGXIII's small postal services unit will transfer to the internal market directorate. The new Dutch Commissioner is keen to revive the controversial postal liberalisation legislation shelved by Martin Bangemann under massive internal political pressure.

One of the biggest overhauls will take place in foreign policy, where DGIA (external relations) and DGI (trade) - currently residing in seven different Brussels locations - will be replaced by four new departments with responsibility for external relations, EU enlargement, development and trade.

Chris Patten, who has been given the job of coordinating work on all the external relations dossiers, will chair regular meetings with Gönter Verheugen (enlargement) Poul Nielsen (deve-lopment) and Pascal Lamy (trade).

All trade and development policy desk officers will move into Patten's external relations department and he will take over responsibility for monitoring human rights abuses and promoting democracy from DGVIII (development). Prodi has also ordered an inquiry into possible cost savings from eliminating duplication caused by the overlap between the new development DG and the European Community Humanitarian Aid Office (ECHO).

Apart from Patten, Verheugen will be the only foreign policy Commissioner to head his own fully-fledged service: an enlargement department staffed with the country experts now working in DGIA and Klaus van der Pas' enlargement task force.

Following criticism by the Court of Auditors of the Commission's fragmented handling of nuclear affairs, a new unit will be set up within the environment DG to deal with safety and radiation issues, while nuclear policy will transfer to energy under Loyola de Palacio.