Redeployment to plug Commission staff gaps

The European Commission is planning to meet its staff needs after 2009 by redeploying officials rather than asking to hire new personnel.

Dalia Grybauskaite, the commissioner in charge of budgets, said yesterday (2 May) that although the Commission needed 1,600 more staff from 2009 she would not be seeking additional posts once new staff had been taken on following the last waves of enlargement. "We will tackle [this] via redeployment," said Grybauskaite.

The Commission’s position is set out in a screening report into staff needs produced after the negotiations on the 2007 budget under the Finnish presidency. The Finnish government had asked to cut 1,700 staff posts to match savings in other national administrations but the proposal was not backed by a majority of EU governments and MEPs.

The report points out that EU governments and the European Parliament agreed that 4,810 new staff should be recruited in 2003-09 to deal with the added workload following enlargement of the EU to 27 member states.

Once those staff have been taken on, there will be no request for additional staff.

The report says that the Commission will need to focus more in coming years on law-monitoring and enforcement activities. In particular, it predicts an increase in infringement procedures related to new member states failing to implement EU law.

This is in addition to the identified policy priorities of fighting climate change and achieving a common energy policy, completing the internal market, external action, responding to globalisation and managing migration flows.

Grybauskaite’s comments came as she presented the draft budget for 2008.

The commissioner highlighted the fact that, for the first time, the share of the budget for policies designed to boost economic growth and jobs was larger than that for support to agriculture. The Commission has proposed an overall budget of €129.2 billion (in commitments) for next year, an increase of 2% compared to 2007. The Commission has earmarked €57.2bn for competitiveness and cohesion (mainly regional development aid and research and development), 44.2% of the total budget, compared to €56.3bn for support to farmers and rural areas, 43.6% of the total.

Grybauskaite said that spending on market support mechanisms like intervention and export refunds was supposed to fall next year by 11% because of ongoing reform of the Common Agricultural Policy while there would be a 1% rise in direct aid to farmers because of Romania and Bulgaria entering the Union.

The commissioner also said that spending on administration for all EU institutions was set to rise by 5.7% next year. The increase for the Commission was 4.1%. There is a planned increase in spending on staff pensions of 10.2% as civil servants who had joined the institutions at certain times were due to retire. The budget for European schools is also set to rise, as the accession of 12 new member states in the last three years has boosted demand and requires an increased capacity.

The European Commission is planning to meet its staff needs after 2009 by redeploying officials rather than asking to hire new personnel.