towards a better Europe   Return to the archives list Is Kinnock signing off on the wrong things . . . ? This Commission failed to produce useful output on European Governance. Countries ranked by this Commission as first in line for accession have been hiding horrific human rights abuse. This Commission urgently needs to increase its effectiveness and transparency. But the current administrative reforms are doing the reverse. As a result, the image of the institution and its de facto capabilities are becoming compromised. Is this yet another Commission in crisis? Taking into account the level of interest in this article and as a result of direct requests we will be updating and reissuing this article during October 2005. Commission Institutional Reform? Commission staff solidarity increases in the face of what are considered to be inappropriate reforms... Montage Comique by GEL-Portsea It is with some concern that we report that the staff at the European Commission organized a strike on Friday 11th April 2003 to protest at the Commission reforms which have a direct impact on working methods and internal staff relations. Most press reports on the so-called Commission reform have been neutral or even positive. However, the people who have to implement these reforms, and live with them day by day, are the 25,000 European civil servants, and they are not happy. Since they are the people directly affected by such reforms it is perhaps worth trying to understand why they are complaining. Money, or something more fundamental? Invariably when there is confrontation between employers and staff we tend to cynically assume it is something to do with money, that is pay and pensions. There is indeed an element of this in the current confrontation but having now spoken to EU Commission staff and reviewed the statements of the various staff representatives, we realise that there is something far more sinister going on. Is the Commission helping strengthen Europe? This Commission came in under the shadow of a previous Commission which was sacked for aloofness, petty corruption and, many would say, being out of contact with the population at large. The natural tendency, always, is not to blame leaders or Commissioners, but rather to try and explain things away in terms of "inadequate structures", poor "staff working methods", lack of staff "accountability" and of course the usual standards of transparency and efficiency. Neil Kinnock took up the responsibility to tackle this Commission staff reform "problem". Too remote? The other issues which were raised as Totem poles or objectives of this new slimmed down, lean and mean Commission, were to propose ways to improve European Governance and welcome another 12 countries into the Union. That seemed to be quite enough to keep everyone busy and quiet for at least 3 or 4 years. But inevitably the "deliverables" from these efforts have to be presented for all to see and, what we have seen so far, leaves little doubt that on these issues the Commission has failed to deliver. They have failed in a resounding fashion. Internal factors Any institutional reforms need to facilitate the interaction of European Commission staff with people called Europeans and an ability to generate, in a proactive fashion, activities approved by the European population. To be able to achieve such an "open" administration it is essential that the Commission has a strong collegiate function in the sense that staff members be encouraged to assist one another with information and guidance on, for example, the many so-called horizontal issue which, those working "vertical" services, need to understand and deal with. A robust and open Commission staff structure can proactively assist and develop activities in the direct interests of the people of Europe. Some essentials For this to be possible, top management must take on the responsibility for what happens in their staff groups. Staff should be free to manage funds and liaise with their funded "clients" in an open fashion supported by reasonably light procedural requirements so that they spend more time working on client issues than satisfying administrative demands. Here information technology can help but in a practical fashion. Middle ranking staff should be permitted to take decisions which tie in with any programme policy and expect to be backed up by their managers if such decisions indeed tie in with broad policy. Staff cannot afford to be burdened with the responsibility of the threat of becoming personally responsible for decisions to the extent that any funds advanced under such a decision can be recovered from the staff members pay packet. Bad reform Having spoken to several senior and middle management staff at the Commission we have to conclude that the so-called Administrative reforms have effectively undermined the collegiate structure at the Commission. Staff have been thrown into direct competition and senior management are trying to push responsibility for project and programme management down stream to their middle ranking staff. The result has been an atomization of staff collaboration, many staff worried that a mistake made by someone in carrying out a reasonable decision, will end up docking their own pay. Another quirky requirement is that everyone within what were formally collegiate work groups, now have contractual relationships each with the other. This means if something unexpected crops up, which is quite normal at the Commission, concerned staff, being asked to do something which is not in their contract, refuse to undertake the task until the contract is modified. Some middle to senior management have complained that the system is wide open to abuse, on the part of those staff who want to do everything by the book. The by-the-book mentality is being reinforced by the disciplinary elements within the new reforms. "In the end," commented a middle level manager, "the system has become self-defeating. The member of staff who wants to deliver a professional performance in spite of changing circumstances risks punishment."       A bomb!? Oh no you silly billy, this is my lunch bag! A senior manager who agreed that the working environment at the Commission is deteriorating commented ruefully that, "We haven't come to the situation yet, where a bureaucrat tries to correct an administrative error and ends up as an enemy of the state, as in the case of Sam Lowry in the film Brazil, but it is neither fun not particularly professional anymore. The cause of this is not the staff but rather the mind set of those who have imposed this new system." On the other hand, in terms of monitoring and evaluation of the process, some more inventive managers have got round the contractual issues by inventing all-embracing competencies and functions. In this way the old flexibility can be somewhat regained but then the existing basis for assessing performance become irrelevant. The former collegiate, and maybe somewhat comfortable, working style of the Commission is evaporating and in some sectors which manage large numbers of projects, it has already evaporated. Many capable staff who previously managed large budgets did not request this year, any budget at all. "There is a management "implosion" going on and Kinnock and his types just dont see it". commented a Senior Commission staff member last week, "The environment is really bad, people are beginning not to trust one another." This is bad news for all of us In conclusion, beyond issues of salary and pensions, we think the staff have much to worry about. However, this worry is not one which should concern Commission staff, it should concern us, the European public. The reason that we should all be concerned is that all current proposals on the Constitution, the past proposals on Governance and some aspects of European enlargement, all demand a consolidation in the strength and the role of the Commission. This is a remarkable state of affairs when the track record of the current Commission provides ample evidence of an increasingly non-functional institution. Some precedents, all bad We asked an International Staff Counsellor with the independent Audit Commission, his views on the Commission reforms. Commission staff relations were better than most He commented that, "The EU Commission reform seems to have been based upon institutions such as the World Bank and some of the US aid agencies. In our staff counsel work, during the last decade, we have assisted several staff in internal administrative cases. From that experience we have found that the European Commission, for example, has had far fewer serious staff problems and less whistle blowers than, for example, the World Bank. In fact the EU Commission staff relations, as international organizations go, have been reasonably healthy. We have seen very few cases of witch hunts or vindictive managers being able to manage the system to their full advantage." Break down in staff cohesion "In other institutions, which have procedures such as those being introduced in the Commission, use is commonly made of so-called competencies to define jobs and assess staff. However, as these baseline benchmarks come into play one does observe the set in of a mild form of paranoia and stress, on the part of staff. This is because these vocational criteria come with downside risks, the main one of which is their use as weapons against the staff.  EU staff now have more to worry about than their desk size.. When things go wrong, managers can try and use a rapid assessment of a staff member's competencies as a basis for downgrading and eventually getting rid of a member of staff. This simple device can be quite abusive in terms of staff treatment and when the manager's job is potentially on the line, the ferocity has to be seen to be believed." Stacking cards against staff "This sort of treatment is especially true of whistle blowers who, incidentally, are normally individuals who follow procedures and the rule book. Such abuse can descend to levels in which managers literally generate fraudulent evidence such as forged documents to have staff sacked. It is normal for administrative committees and tribunals to take management "evidence" at face value but be a little more industrious in their cross examination of staff. In broad terms the cards are still stacked against the staff, including the innocent ones." Chaos on the inside "Such systems, far from increasing transparency and efficiency, end up with little transparency and overall efficiency plummets because decision making is so stifled and staff become less proactive and enter a state of gridlock." All plain sailing on the outside "The airways and other media, however, remain open to the management who proclaim the importance of transparency and anti-corruption on the part of governments the institutions serve. This is an important issue but more often than not it is a displacement activity designed to shift the focus away from the institution's own performance. Institutions such as the World Bank sustain and defend a positive media image but their managagement of international loans leaves much to be desired with some 65% of which do not perform adequately. Put bluntly, 65% of their activity, of value of around $14 billion, does not achieve what was intended. A private company or government performing on this basis would be unlikely to survive. Part of the problem is that these institutions remain largely unaccountable to the population at large and the governments they serve and this makes managers and Commissioners too powerful and/or largely immune from demands to improve their personal accountability." Monitoring & evaluation "Another bad practice is the introduction of miriads of project and programme control and monitoring criteria which force staff to spend more time keying in data at their PCs than in dealing with their clients. We have had several complaints, for example, about USAid. This organizations imposes so many monitoring and evaluation criteria that many potential beneficiary organizations cannot contemplate participating in their projects. We know of some good NGOs, with highly professional staff and associates, who have not bothered to respond to USAid calls for some years." "From what we have read and heard I would not be surprised to hear, some years down the line, that the European Commission has committed a slow and painful administrative Hari-Kiri. Future historians will no doubt "discover" that this outcome is directly traceable to these current reforms. It is more likely that the next Commission will commit this reform to the garbage can." External factors of concern Governance This inappropriate staff reform is being introduced during a period in which we witnessed a high profile effort, managed by the Commission, into European Governance. This is something one would imagine the European population would know something about since this work was completed some months back. We have found that 95% of people asked were not aware that the European Commission has worked on this topic. On the other hand, some of those who knew about this had been on email lists concerning European issues. Even these individuals were not aware of the outcome of this high profile action. Enlargement In the area of EU enlargement it has come to light that there are ongoing and widespread racial discrimination and child abuse within the educational institutions and local government administrations in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia. These recent revelations throw into question the transparency of the evaluation procedures at the Commission. While these countries and the European Parliament vote to agree on accession one has to question the quality of the information used to qualify these countries and advise the European Parliament and Member State governments. Indeed, in sharp contrast to the bleak human rights abuse on the ground, the European Commission continues to rank these countries as the "first in line" for accession. Spectacular failure The Commission already shows poor transparency in some of its critical activities and has had some ill defined outcomes on the fundamental issues of Governance and the status of Human Rights in some candidate countries. This situation is bound to degenerate if the Commission is undermined by so-called administrative reforms which seriously undermine its internal management effectiveness. And yet the European Convention, charged with drafting the new European Constitution, has placed some emphasis on the central role of the European Commission in the future. European citizens need to reflect on the future utility of such an institution which has failed to engage and inform in such a spectacular fashion, on such fundamental issues. There can be no doubt however that there is an evolving crisis at the Commission and the latest administrative reforms have made the situation worse and not better.