Pressure grows for shake-up of EU’s expanding overseas offices

Date: 22/02/1996

A TOUGH internal battle is looming inside the European Commission as it comes under increasing pressure to restructure its expanding network of overseas offices.

The European Parliament has already frozen 10&percent; of this year's 190-million-ecu budget for external delegations and has warned the funds will remain blocked, forcing emergency savings and blunting the Commission's ambitions, unless a strategy for tailoring staff to new priorities emerges within the next few weeks.

The Commission's global presence has grown out of all recognition in recent years. Almost 40&percent; of the 126 overseas offices it operates in places as far apart as Colombia and the Ukraine have been opened in the past five years, and around 600 full-time officials and 1,800 local staff are now needed to run them all.

It is this expansion which has prompted increased pressure from MEPs for a wide-ranging review of the EU's external service.

“Redeployment must take place before the money can be released and we will be hearing from the Commission by the end of March on their response to the conditions we have set,” Dutch Liberal MEP Laurens Brinkhorst said this week.

Senior EU officials acknowledge the need for such a review. “The Commission has to reconsider its overseas network. It cannot just keep on establishing new delegations,” said one.

“You have to take budgetary realities into account. The current network is not balanced. It was basically created for Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific and industrialised countries. Since then, we have had the explosion in Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Mediterranean.”

But making the necessary changes to overseas offices - which handle economic and development policy, deal with commercial issues, provide political reporting, collect and disseminate information, and increasingly consider security matters - will be far from easy.

Any attempt to shift resources from the southern hemisphere, particularly Africa, into the new democratic countries behind the former Iron Curtain would be bitterly opposed by João de Deus Pinheiro, the Commissioner in charge of relations with 70 African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, many of whom have had long-standing ties with the Union.

Opposition to any proposals for change may also come from other External Policy Commissioners - Hans van den Broek, Sir Leon Brittan and Manuel Marin - who each enjoy direct responsibility for particular areas of the world.

However, supporters of a more fundamental reappraisal, including greater use of regional offices covering several countries, are gradually gaining ground.

They point to new geopolitical realities. The Commission is represented in the Solomon Islands and Swaziland, but has no presence in the Gulf and there are no delegation offices between Damascus and Islamabad.

Commissioners will also have to decide whether to change earlier priorities and establish bilateral delegations in the former Yugoslavia ahead of countries such as Belorussia, Saudi Arabia and even Switzerland.

Commission Secretary-General David Williamson has already prepared an initial assessment of the Parliament's demands, which Commissioners will examine early next month.