Seismic shift required to give Brussels’ think-tanks same weight as those in US

By Helen Morris

Date: 16/12/04

RON Asmus, US deputy assistant secretary of state for European affairs in the Clinton administration, is currently negotiating a package with the German Marshall Fund of the United States to replace Bill Drozdiak as head of the Brussels office.

Asmus is expected to be closely involved in the day-to-day workings of the office, in charge of his own budget line and project.

A glance across the think-tanks of Brussels and the EU-25 shows that there is no such thing as a European model for their structure, funding or personnel.

But the involvement of a former and, more than likely, future high-ranking government official in the nitty-gritty day-to-day research and analysis work of a US body contrasts with the general lack of a 'revolving door' on the European scene.

It is not simply the oft-cited higher levels of remuneration available to US organizations which allows them to have a more direct impact on policymaking. The very system of government in which several thousand posts are up for grabs whenever an administration changes colour lends itself to making think-tanks serious and useful policymaking vehicles.

Hosting the expertise of a former administration allows research organizations to become respected non-partisan institutions containing both parties.

No such wholesale change accompanies the appointment of a new administration in Brussels. The cabinets of the commissioners are small by comparison and tend to recruit from within European Commission ranks.

A notable exception is the recent move of the Centre for European Reform's Heather Grabbe to Olli Rehn's cabinet along with her former colleague Steven Everts to Javier Solana's office at the European Council. In the other direction, former directors-general or commissioners would find it hard to have their salary expectations met in a European think-tank. Pascal Lamy's move to replace Jacques Delors at Notre Europe is not expected to include day-to-day involvement in research work.

The lack of personnel exchange between government and think-tanks creates a vicious circle as European think-tanks struggle to achieve the level of success and influence of their US counterparts. Think-tanks are robbed of the expertise of policy practitioners and struggle to become more serious and useful policymaking vehicles.

Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, believes that the failure to exchange personnel encourages short-termism among policymakers. "Bureaucrats tend to have a short- term policy perspective, taking up the received wisdom on a subject; those in think-tanks can afford to take a longer- term view," he says.

Commenting on the exodus of junior think-tank members to the Commission, Marco Incerti, of the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels, says that think-tanks "are not so much of a political feeding ground but rather serve as training for the job in a town where the Commission is the centre of gravity".

He adds: "This is not unique to think-tanks. There are few other alternatives if you want to move up in the salary stakes."

The recent Notre Europe report, Europe and its Think-Tanks: A Promise to be Fulfilled, suggested that bodies in new members states had less contact with decision-makers and tended to concentrate on communicating ideas more to the wider public. The move of a number of think-tankers to the European Parliament who are maintaining links with think-tanks could be a sign of greater political contacts in the future.

MEP and former Polish defence minister Janusz Onyszkiewicz remains a senior fellow at the Polish Centre for International Relations. In the Baltic states, exchange of personnel - and indeed members of government - on the boards of independent research bodies is harder to avoid where the modest size of the countries along with language barriers necessarily reduces the potential pool of experts, perhaps forcing greater overlap.

For think-tanks in the European context to gain the same degree of respect and integration into the political system as they are afforded in the US requires former senior national government or Commission officials to do more than have their names attached to boards and bring in friends and acquaintances as members and benefactors.

This will necessitate a seismic shift, not just in the funding of think-tanks, but in the very structure of European national government and Commission advisors.

• Helen Morris is a freelance journalist based in Brussels.

Author says that there is no such thing as a European model for the structure, funding or personnel of think-tanks and that in the US there is a much higher degree of respect and integration into the political system.