Commission reforms spark turf battle

Date: 25/09/1997

By Rory Watson

ALARM bells are ringing in the European Commission's external relations departments as plans are hatched for a major overhaul of existing procedures and personnel.

Under the proposals being championed by Commission President Jacques Santer, five of the existing departments would transfer many of their staff and responsibilities to a new service which would manage all Union aid to the rest of the world.

Supporters of the reorganisation argue it is necessary if the financial assistance provided by the EU, which has grown from 2.3 billion ecu to 8 billion ecu over the past nine years, is to be managed as efficiently as possible.

But it is running into fierce opposition at two levels. Some critics who equate staff numbers with influence within the Commission fear that the transfer of up to 500 officials to the new department would weaken their existing powers.

Others have a more fundamental objection. They believe that the shake-up, which would come on top of earlier administrative changes still being digested, could eventually decrease efficiency by making an artificial and rigid separation between policy formulation and implementation.

Under the current timetable, the plan - which is due to be examined by Santer and his colleagues within the next fortnight - would be implemented by the middle of next year. But if Commissioners are to prevent a turf war, they will have to remove one of the major question marks still hanging over the project.

Under the existing proposals, all four external relations Commissioners would share collective responsibility for the new service. But as one senior official commented after observing the Commission's handling of its responsibilities over the past three years: “One thing is clear: a foreign policy built around four egos does not work.”

The Commission president confirmed his determination to press ahead with the scheme earlier this month. Openly lamenting the inability of EU governments to bite the bullet of institutional reform at their Amsterdam summit in June, he announced that their failure would not prevent the Commission from trying to put its own house in order.

“I am launching this reform straightaway. We will group all the external relations directorates-general under one roof and we will give them a single structure whose role will be to execute the Union's aid to third countries,” he said.

In the longer run, the overhaul fits in with wider Commission plans to reorganise its internal administration and leave a more coherent foreign policy structure for its successor in the year 2000, when one vice-president will be given overall responsibility for external relations.

The creation of a common service to handle the Union's development aid will involve a major administrative upheaval, with knock-on effects for the majority of the 3,500 officials and experts currently involved in the Commission's foreign policy activities.

The new service - already dubbed SCOOP from its French title of service commun de cooperation - will have a wide range of responsibilities in managing the financial, accounting, contractual, legal and many technical aspects of all the projects concerned.

But senior officials with misgivings about the project have already put down dissenting markers. Some insist the possibility of eventually transferring all the tasks to an outside agency should not be ruled out. Others want to exclude EU aid to central and eastern Europe under the Phare programme from the scheme.