Parliament’s top official warns of recruitment crisis

Date: 25/04/02

By David Cronin

THE European Parliament could encounter lengthy delays in hiring staff needed to cope with the EU's eastward enlargement unless swift progress is made on forming a new recruitment service, according to its top official.

Secretary-General Julian Priestley this week dubbed the methods under which EU institutions recruit staff as 'cumbersome, wasteful, costly and at times unprofessional'. The unit within the Parliament which deals with competitions has the capacity to organise about 15 of these per year but receives requests to organise 60.

Speaking to the assembly's legal affairs committee on Tuesday (23 April), Priestley said it is necessary to proceed with plans to establish a new office to coordinate staff recruitment for the EU institutions. He hopes the bureau, Parliament's highest internal body, will endorse the new office at its next meeting on 13 May.

'There is a degree of urgency about this,' he said. 'We need to start preparing competitions for enlargement - at least competitions for [translators] for new languages.'

However, some MEPs are wary about the move, fearing the biggest institution, the European Commission, will have too much say in its running. German Christian Democrat Klaus-Heiner Lehne described the new office as 'a massive mistake', voicing concerns that it would not serve the 'separate requirements of Parliament'.

In response, Priestley said that safeguards had been devised to ensure each institution will be treated fairly by the new office. Each will have one member on its management board, with the head of the office appointed with the assent of all institutions. The Parliament will also be able to scrutinise the office's accounts.

'This is not an office which the Commission tried to impose on Parliament,' he said.

Its work, he added, could help redress some of the imbalances currently facing the Parliament's staff structures, particularly grievances raised by Swedish and Finnish members over the scarcity of translators working in their languages. It could also organise recruitment proceedings for areas with inadequacies. For example, the Parliament is 'woefully short' of officials with experience of drafting legal documents, he remarked.

British Conservative Malcolm Harbour reminded the committee that the entire Parliament had already approved a report which he prepared in November 2000, calling for the recruitment office to be formed.

He was surprised, he said, that there had been a fresh 'explosion in interest' about the issue as he regarded it as 'crucial' to the reforms of EU institutions currently under way.

The European Parliament could encounter lengthy delays in hiring staff needed to cope with the EU's eastward enlargement unless swift progress is made on forming a new recruitment service, according to Secretary-General Julian Priestley.