Kinnock pledges on ‘parachutage’ clash with rumours of promotions

By Tim King

Date: 03/06/04

NEIL Kinnock, the European commissioner for personnel and administrative reform, has assured the staff unions that the practice of promoting officials from commissioners' private offices, known in Brussels parlance as 'parachutage', will be much reduced at the end of the current Commission.

His assurance comes amid mounting speculation that senior members of the current cabinets are being lined up for top positions in the administration. Stefano Manservisi, currently head of the private office of Romano Prodi, the president of the Commission, is expected to become director-general for development.

He would be the third official to move from heading Prodi's cabinet to become a director-general after David O'Sullivan, now secretary-general, and Michel Petite, head of the legal service.

Commission officials Gert Jan Koopman, head of Kinnock's cabinet, and Daniel Calleja, who heads the private office of the Transport Commissioner, Loyola de Palacio, are being talked about as likely appointments to posts as directors or advisors, with the rank of A2 under the old grading system (14 or 15 under the new staff regulations). The Commission decided in February, at the same time as reserving 37 posts at grades 14-16 for candidates from the new countries, to create six new posts as "principal advisors".

Eric Mamer, spokesman for Kinnock, said that these posts would be advertised both internally and externally, so it was to be expected that members of cabinets who were temporary appointments to the Commission could apply for them.

But he said any recruitment would take place according to "rigorous" procedures. The staff union Renouveau et Democratie (R&D) has warned against "a campaign of parachutages of colleagues in cabinets". Franco Ianniello, of R&D, said that the principal advisor posts might be targeted at members of cabinet. His complaints were taken up in the European Parliament by Italian MEPs Antonio Tajani, Giuseppe Gargani and Stefano Zappalà, from Forza Italia, who were concerned about appointments from "commissioners' office staff and the president's political advisors".

But Alan Hick, president of Union Syndicale-Brussels, this week took a much more conciliatory line. He said the question of parachutage had been raised at a meeting last month between the staff unions and the Commission. Kinnock had produced figures suggesting that since the Commission teams led by Jacques Delors, parachutage was much reduced.

"In the past there was a large amount of exaggerated parachutage. That is being radically reduced," Hick said. He insisted the unions remained opposed to providing jobs for cabinet appointees who had been brought in from outside and had never passed a competition for admission to the Commission. In the past, he said, some people had been promoted who had not been particularly brilliant and had not been civil servants in the first place.

But there were also officials who had gone through open competition and were "very well qualified".

"You get officials who have been through open competitions, who have worked their way through the ranks, prove themselves able to work in cabinets and are put on a fast track promotion procedure or are candidates for senior appointments," Hick said.

Mamer said the Commission had not yet taken a decision on who would head the development directorate-general. The post had been advertised internally, he said.

European Commissioner Neil Kinnock says that the practice of promoting officials from the cabinets of Commissioners into senior posts within the European Commission is being reduced.