Kinnock urged to go further with reforms

Date: 30/11/00

By John Shelley

THE European Parliament is insisting that Administrative Reform Commissioner Neil Kinnock's plans to overhaul the EU executive's staff structure must go further if he is to overcome the problems created by decades of inflexibility.

In a report which was set to be adopted by the full Parliament today (30 November), MEPs argue that more needs to be done to address staffing levels if the Commission is serious about improving its efficiency.

The paper says existing plans to move officials from overstaffed to more thinly-stretched departments will affect only a few workers. "The European Parliament supports the internal attempts envisaged to re-deploy staff and improve productivity [but] regrets that redeployment measures will affect no more than 4% of the staff," states the paper, drafted by French Socialist MEP Catherine Guy-Quint.

The report is one of four due to be adopted by the assembly which assess Kinnock's plans for reforming the Commission following the resignation of Jacques Santer's team last year.

All welcome the majority of the reforms, but stress that a great deal still needs to be done. The human resources policy comes in for particular criticism.

Guy-Quint points out that the Parliament has been calling for the Commission to submit an assessment of its staffing needs since before the reform process began. But despite repeated complaints from independent experts that the institution does not have sufficient staff to perform its tasks the Commission still has not carried out a full study of what its current requirements are and what they will be in the future.

In particular, MEPs say the Commission has not made it clear if the 375 new posts it has requested are intended to cope with enlargement of the Union or whether even more jobs will have to be created later.

The Parliament has also taken issue with a proposed overhaul of the way the EU's budget is fixed. MEPs are worried that plans to give the Commission greater powers to decide its own financial needs will weaken the assembly's role as a watchdog. Guy-Quint says this could make it more difficult for the assembly to scrutinise how EU cash is spent, particularly on administration.

"The Parliament is totally opposed to the introduction of a system which would not guarantee either the transparency of the analysis or its powers of decision on the allocation of human and administrative resources," she said.

The European Parliament is insisting that Administrative Reform Commissioner Neil Kinnock's plans to overhaul the EU executive's staff structure must go further if he is to overcome the problems created by decades of inflexibility.