College’s half-term report

Date: 11/09/1997

FOR the past two and a half years, the shadow of the European Parliament has hung over the Commission led by former Luxembourg Prime Minister Jacques Santer.

MEPs only endorsed Santer in his new role by the narrowest of margins and then, six months later, subjected his 19 colleagues to US Senate-style hearings for the first time - an innovation which some found distinctly uncomfortable.

For Euro MPs, the procedure demonstrated the fact that they have ultimate political control over the Commission and helps explain why Commissioners and their staff now respond more swiftly than in the past to parliamentary requests.

More recently, MEPs have used their budgetary powers to influence the Commission's information policy, to determine staffing levels in certain departments and to clarify the extent to which Commissioners have outside financial interests.

Now as the Commission enters the second half of its five-year mandate, it is facing the possibility of a censure vote by the Parliament later this autumn. To avoid the ignominy, it will have to satisfy MEPs that it has tackled the roots of the BSE scandal and put fireproof safeguards in place to prevent any similar crisis.

This closer scrutiny is, however, something which Santer - for one - welcomes and believes increases the Commission's legitimacy.

“I feel the Parliament has shown itself as a real parliament which controls the executive. The Commission and I therefore play a democratic role by being under parliamentary control,” he explained in a recent interview with European Voice.

Increased parliamentary pressure is not the only constraint with which the Commission has had to contend since taking up office in January 1995. It has also had to deal with governments reluctant to yield any further power to EU institutions and respond to a public widely sceptical about European integration.

These factors explain the relatively low-key, softly softly approach of much Commission activity and the emphasis on teamwork, rather than on individual brilliance. As a result, few individual personalities make the headlines.

During her first year of office, the Fisheries and Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Emma Bonino was a notable exception. So too, more recently, was her competition colleague Karel van Miert, after winning his transatlantic eyeball-to-eyeball encounter over the merger of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas.

The general mood has been summed up by Santer's motto during the first half of his Commission presidency of “do less, but better”. But while it was initially welcomed after the hectic pace set by his predecessor Jacques Delors, that brief mission statement is now coming in for increased criticism.

“If we take it literally, we will end up doing nothing. Then, we might as well pack up,” said one senior official.

The results of this policy are clear to see. The flow of draft EU legislation has dried to a trickle over the past two and a half years. This is presented as a virtue to a public which, often mistakenly, accuses 'Brussels' in its many guises of stifling it with rules and red tape.

The vacuum left by the paucity of legislation may only be temporary. It has been partly filled by a more extensive consultation process as the Commission produces Green and White Papers on subjects ranging from public procurement to the future of the Union's relationship with 70 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries - a process which could, in time, lead to legislation.

The Commission also finds itself increasingly often in the role known by the French as animateur: cajoling and persuading, by argument rather than legislation, governments and economic actors to follow examples of best practice and adopt certain courses of action.

Following Santer's dictum, the Commission sets itself a small number of key priorities and is reluctant to allow other policies to deflect it from this central course.

“At the outset, our programme was to achieve economic and monetary union, to complete the Intergovernmental Conference, to present Agenda 2000 on the Union's future and to prepare for enlargement. If we manage all this, we will have achieved our mission,” explained Santer.

How successful the Commission will be in meeting these targets will only become clear in 1999. But its cautious approach was clearly visible in the IGC negotiations, prompted largely by fears that a more aggressive stance would trigger national moves to trim back its powers.

In reality, the Commission cannot restrict itself to its core agenda. It is also heavily involved in a number of common EU policies ranging from agriculture to the environment and in seeking ways to tackle unemployment, improve cooperation on justice and home affairs, and project a coherent foreign policy.

But as the Treaty of Amsterdam so clearly demonstrates, prime responsibility for the last three areas will remain firmly in national hands, even though they are of growing importance to the Union.

Behind the scenes, some long-overdue changes have begun to percolate through the Commission. These are still largely invisible to the outside world but will, over time, improve efficiency and make their presence felt.

Advantages offered by technological breakthroughs are being more carefully exploited. When the Commission made public its wide-ranging Agenda 2000 programme with 1,400 pages of closely argued text in mid-July, it made full use of the Internet for the first time.

More importantly, before the contents were made generally available, restricted access to the report was given to certain Commission employees. The unprecedented use of the embargo system ensured that staff working in delegations in the various central and eastern European countries seeking EU membership were fully briefed well before the official presentation.

The institution is also heavily involved in the unglamorous task of reshaping its own internal organisation. This has rarely been given much importance in the past as previous Commissions have concentrated on policy formulation and shied away from a battle few believed could be won.

In one sense, there was less pressure to do so. While national civil services were overhauling themselves in the Eighties, the Commission was spared the pain. The period coincided with an expansion in EU activities as the drive towards the single market gained speed, social policy moved up the agenda and new horizons opened in central and eastern Europe.

Such demands meant there was rarely difficulty in securing extra staff when it was felt justified. Those days are over, as governments now subject all the EU's institutions - but particularly the Commission - to the same rigour and as ever fewer areas of Union activity escape the constraints of a single currency.

The Commission is now implementing the third phase of its sound financial management programme, ensuring a coherent budgetary culture throughout all its departments.

Later this month, it is expected to give the go-ahead to the first phase of plans to modernise its administration and personnel by devolving tasks to individual departments.

These are likely to be followed by a more ambitious internal reform: an overhaul of the number of Commission departments and of the role of Commissioners so that these, in the words of the new Treaty of Amsterdam, “ensure an optimum division between conventional portfolios and specific tasks”.

Whether these internal reforms achieve their various objectives remains to be seen. But there is no doubt that the organisational changes are being accompanied by a clear shift in the nature of the Commission's work.

The institution, partly under the pragmatic influence brought to bear by new member states such as Sweden and Finland, is no longer providing the political leadership it did in the late Eighties. Instead, it is fulfilling a less glamorous, administrative role.

Not everyone is happy with the evolution, but it has removed much of the bête noire stigma which had until recently been attached to the institution. Whatever policy achievements Santer and his colleagues bequeath to their successors at the end of 1999, that legacy is likely to include a new direction for the Commission.