Prodi hatches plan to slim down cabinets

Date: 13/05/1999

By Tim Jones

EUROPEAN Commissioners may be forced to reduce the size of their private offices under plans being hatched by incoming President Romano Prodi.

The former Italian premier has ordered a review of the workings of Commissioners' cabinets following criticism of the current system by the committee of wisemen, whose stinging report into cronyism and corruption led to the mass resignation Jacques Santer's 20-member team in March.

David O'Sullivan, Prodi's newly appointed chief of staff, told European Voice this week that the review could well recommend slimming down the institution's 160-strong cabinet staff.

" Once you have decided what the precise roles of the Commis-sioners, the directorates-general and the cabinets will be, then you can judge how many people will be needed to do the work," he said. "The more you restrict the cabinets to a purely politically advisory role, the fewer people you will need."

In a speech to MEPs last week, Prodi cited Commissioners' private offices as a culprit in "the development of grey areas bet-ween technical and political areas".

Unclear lines of responsibility for the Commission's administrative and policy-making roles have been identified by both the wisemen and governments as one of the key management problems facing the institution.

Cabinet staff are hired on fixed-term contracts to give political advice to Commissioners in all areas of policy, to help their bosses to decide how to vote on issues outside their areas of responsibility.

However, they also drive the development and final drafting of proposals before they reach Commissioners - a process which critics see as encroaching on the functions of permanent staff in the services.

" There is a lot of thought going into the division of labour and how the line of command can be better clarified between the Commissioners, the directors-general, the cabinets and the services and inter-cabinet work before issues go to the College," said O'Sullivan.

" It has to be seen in the round, however. It is the whole functioning of the system that needs to be looked at to achieve a clear distinction between political responsibility and the managerial function. It is clear that this College will have to give particular attention to that issue and estab-lish mechanisms to show that it is being taken seriously."

Prodi has also urged his team to follow the lead he has set by appointing O'Sullivan - a 46-year-old Irishman - and avoid turning their private offices into national ghettoes.

But O'Sullivan declined to say whether his whole team would be multinational. "It is a question of matching people with skills and profiles," he said. "You cannot have multinationality as an objective in itself. Experience shows that you need a good mixture of in-house and external experience too as well as gender balance."