Key proposals for cleaning up shamed institution

Date: 29/07/1999

Political responsibility
THE Santer Commission arguably fell because the first wise men's report claimed that nobody in the College was prepared to accept responsibility for management failings.

The second report seeks to define what responsibility individual Commissioners should accept for policy implementation and what should be shouldered by their directors-general. The committee dismisses suggestions that Commissioners should only be responsible for laying down policy, while directors-general should take the flak for poor implementation or mismanagement. “This distinction, if strictly interpreted, is tenable neither in law or in fact,” states the report.

A Commissioner's “full political responsibility” is defined as an obligation to be fully accountable to the Commission as a body and consequently to the Parliament for his/her actions and for those of his/her departments. These departments, and their directors-general, are in turn answerable to the Commissioner and through him/her to the Commission and Parliament. The report says Commissioners should be collectively responsible for “failings and problems about which they know or should know - for example, where issues have been raised in Parliament or, in a credible way, in the media”.

Standards in public life
The committee calls for the creation of a Committee of Standards in Public Life (CSPL), which would be established jointly by governments, the Commission and the Parliament.

This panel would draft a 'general code of conduct' for all staff working for EU bodies, but leave space for further sectoral codes which could be tailored to individual institutions.

The wise men do not spell out whether the CSPL should be ad hoc or sit permanently, saying that decision depends on whether it would be tasked only with writing the code or would also monitor and update it, as well as providing advice on specific questions referred to it.

The report recommends a policing panel which would “develop over the years a body of practical rules, reflected in its annual reports and acquire the moral authority that would help to establish and restore the credibility of the Community institutions - both internally and externally”.

To ensure a cultural revolution, it says staff should be obliged to attend seminars on how to apply these codes in practice even if these are seen as a “tiresome imposition”.

Whisteblowing.
Although the committee is unambiguous in their condemnation of the way whistle-blower Paul van Buitnenen was dealt with by the Commission, they are less clear about when Commission officials should be allowed to expose cases of wrongdoing in future.

As a general rule, states the draft report, officials should follow rules recently drawn up by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development which oblige public officials to expose actual or suspected wrongdoing.

But this does not mean that they should come forward every time they believe their colleagues or superiors have not acted correctly. Instead, the draft report makes a distinction between criminal behaviour, where there is a duty to blow the whistle, and other breaches of the rules, which have to be reported according to departmental procedures. However, the committee is unstinting in its praise for Van Buitenen, whose revelations of fraud and corruption led to the downfall of the executive, and fulsome in its criticism of the way he has been treated since he was suspended on half-pay. “Instead of offering impartial advice, the hierarchy put additional pressure on one such official,” states the report.

Openness.
The committee says there is a cultural problem of a lack of openness in the Commission.

There is a “tradition of secretiveness” which leads to a “lack of openness” in matters where there is no justification for confidentiality, it argues.

“Confidentiality must be the exception, not the rule”, states the report, which adds that the best way to achieve openness is not by introducing legal texts or codes of conduct but by developing staff's “mentalities and attitudes”, based on the principle that the public has a right to know how public institutions use the power and resources entrusted to them.

While the public should not have the right to “routine and invasive access” to Commission policy-making, the institution should draw up internal guideliness setting out when policy discussions are sufficiently advanced to be shared with the public. These guidelines should be made public.

The report adds that the new Commission should set an example by moving away from the present mentality of secretiveness, and stresses the importance of independent media in pushing for greater transparency and openness.

Comitology.
The draft report takes a swipe at the powerful committees of national officials which have a huge influence on EU decision-making.

It says these committees, which were originally designed to strengthen accountability, have become fora for pushing national interests and dividing up the spoils of EU funding.

The report attacks the practice, known in Brussels-speak as 'comitology', of taking away responsibility for the management of EU programmes from the Commission and placing it in the hands of member states. “The de facto transfer of responsibility away from those who are supposed to be accountable runs counter to the entire philosophy this Committee has propounded,” it states.

Treaty changes.
The committee is highly critical of the fact that there are no hard and fast rules in the EU treaties about the political responsibility of the Commission in the treaty nor any guidelines on Commissioners' individual responsibility, saying this “is inconsistent with the need to strengthen the sense of responsibility of all persons working in the Commission”.

The report argues that their political responsibility must cover the whole range of areas for which they are accountable, including “personal, managerial and operational shortcomings” in how they perform their duties as well as shortcomings in the departments for which they are responsible.

The wisemen argue that the best way to improve the individual responsibility of Commissioners is to strengthen the hand of the president, adding: “Treaty amendments are needed to set the principle of the president's authority with respect to Commissioners on a firm legal footing.”

The report also highlights the fact that the only treaty clause which allows sanctions to be applied by an outside body against an individual Commissioner relates to “serious misconduct” or a “failure to behave with integrity and discretion, stating that “this does not correspond to the notion of political accountability”.

It also suggests that these definitions should be tightened up in the wake of the Martin Bangemann affair.