Commission puts its money where its mouth is

Date: 01/05/1997

ALL too often, the EU's institutions are justly accused of failing to practise what they preach, tarnishing their reputation in the eyes of the public.

The European Commission's failure to stick to its own guidelines on the prompt payment of bills was a classic example of this. While telling other public institutions and large companies to settle their debts within 60 days, a European Voice investigation late last year revealed that the Commission's own staff were failing to put their money were their mouths were.

Now it has emerged that Budget Commissioner Erkki Liikanen is planning to put the institution's house in order by imposing financial penalties on departments which fail to pay up by the deadline. The move, which comes nearly two years after the Commission first called for bills to be settled on time, may be long overdue but is nevertheless welcome.

It shows that the institution is intent on cleaning up its own act and will send a shiver down the spines of staff in departments where the payment of bills has been given a low priority in the past. Threatening to take the money to compensate firms for late payments out of their operational budgets should concentrate minds wonderfully.

When we highlighted the problems caused by late payments in November last year, Liikanen stressed that some of the delays were caused by factors outside the Commission's control but admitted there were cases where “the process within the Commission has been too slow”. His decision to act now will be welcomed not only by the many small firms which carry out work on behalf of the Commission and rely on a steady cash flow for survival, but also by those members of the European Parliament who warned the delays were damaging the Commission's reputation by “sending a message of sloppiness, bureaucracy and inefficiency”.

Reforming the internal workings of a bureaucracy as large as the Commission is never easy, as demonstrated by the angry reaction from staff unions to a wide-ranging 24-point plan drawn up by Liikanen to decentralise and simplify the institution's procedures. The unions are protesting that the Commissioner failed to consult them before drafting his plan, and draw an analogy between this and the decision by car manufacturer Renault to close its plant at Vilvoorde in Belgium. It is a comparison which many will find hard to accept, given that the Renault closure involves the loss of 3,100 jobs.

Whether the unions' complaints are justified is not, however, at issue here. It merely serves to illustrate just how difficult it is to make administrative changes in a long-established institution.

That does not mean it should not be attempted and Liikanen deserves praise for seizing the initiative.