Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-09-13-Speech-1-042"
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"en.19990913.5.1-042"2
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"Mr President, I am very grateful for the opportunity which this House has provided for comment by the Commission in this debate. The report of the Committee of Independent Experts is obviously large in size and scope and significance, and I know that at this stage Parliament will not seek detailed references to every one of the many comments and valid conclusions. The House will be right, however, to expect effective Commission responses to the recommendations of the committee as we proceed with reform. In this case, as in many others, deeds speak louder than words. As far as I am concerned, and as far as the President and Commission-designate are concerned, that is a maxim and a reality that will shape the reforming mission of the Commission from the outset, if that is the decision of the vote in this House on Wednesday.
In the same spirit, the Commission will respond to the report by setting up an internal audit service, as recommended by the committee, and we reiterate our commitment to the strengthening of financial cells in all directorates-general. As an immediate development, the control of technical assistance organisations is being made more rigorous and specific, and radical reform will ensure clear definition of the core public service functions of Commission officials and effectively supervised and accountable management of executive agencies. A complete overhaul of personnel policy will take place and it will focus in particular on the areas of weakness identified in the report and elsewhere including the Commission’s own stringent report, notably recruitment, discipline and career development and training.
The Committee of Independent Experts advanced the arguments for establishing a committee on standards of public life at European level. The House will know that the Council and this Parliament, as well as the Commission, will obviously have to deliberate on that. As an individual however, I must say that I believe that the functions set out by the committee should be fulfilled either by an existing suitable body or by a new organisation. I hope therefore that all the European institutions will be willing to proceed on that basis. I am certain that the Committee of Wise Men is not exercised by the name of such a body. It is the fulfilment of the functions relating to public standards that is really required.
The Commission of the future must be an independent, permanent and capable public service that puts the principles of accountability, efficiency and transparency to work at all times. The values sustaining the institution should moreover be centred on an ethos of good management, value for money, clear communication, merit and duty to the citizens and taxpayers of the European Union. My colleagues and I share strong commitment to those purposes and to the practical changes need to achieve them. We do not promise instant gains. We do promise unceasing effort. We shall get the advances which the people of the Union deserve and the people of the Union have the right to expect. Given the chance by the vote of this Parliament, we will show that, not in our words but in our deeds.
Mr President, the Committee of Independent Experts has provided us with a comprehensive and constructive report which shows impressive insight and makes practical proposals for progress that is deep, broad and indeed essential. Its diagnosis is of an institution overtaken by, and to some extent overwhelmed by, increases and shifts in demands which over the years should have been met by new standards and methods of management, of practice and of openness, but were not met by those means. The report says that everything outside the Commission changed, whilst it remained largely untouched. The past ruled, conventions paralysed.
Of course a diagnosis is not an excuse, it is at best an explanation which provides the basis for remedy. That is how the report is received in the Commission, the current Commission which has days to live, and the Commission-designate. It must be used by the Commission and, as the committee emphasises, by Member States and by this House as a charter for change, a prescription for cure. That is the essential validity of this report from the Committee of Independent Experts.
As the committee acknowledges in several references, some of the changes needed have taken place and some are in prospect. That recognition is very encouraging. It demonstrates a clear alignment between the recommendations of the committee and the reforms that have been undertaken and the reforms that are impending. There is however no lasting comfort to be taken from that. To the great frustration of those in the Commission and those in this House who have promoted reform, and as we have just heard from Mr Dell’Alba, the advances made so far have been sporadic and not conceived and not implemented as a managed programme of change.
Reform has therefore not gone far enough, fast enough or deep enough. It has been approached in a way that has meant it has not been offered or pursued with the explanation and the reorientation necessary to gain an understanding of purposes and of outcomes. It has therefore not motivated the will of the many high-quality people which, as the report says on several occasions, are in the Commission services. Even those who are interested in and committed to change have not been imbued with a sense of urgency or, crucially, Mr President, a feeling of ownership of reform. The cumulative efforts to modernise have therefore not been strong enough to replace an outdated and deficient culture with the practices and instincts of what is generally termed new public management as it has developed over the last 20 years in several other modern administrations. That must change – and it will change.
Mr President, I heed and I fully understand the view of the committee in its final remarks that no single measure can deal with the problem of mentality, but I do believe that a clear and comprehensive reform strategy, effective mechanisms for vigorously assessing and insisting upon the achievement of objectives, quality of public service and value for money, vocational training in the techniques and ethics of management, strictly meritocratic promotion, fair, firm and trustworthy disciplinary procedures, continual emphasis on professionalism and probity in the college and in the services can mould mentality. That is not a wish-list. It is an outline of the changes that will be designed, the changes that will be put into effect.
In undertaking those tasks we have the advantage of the commitment of the many people in the Commission services who, as the committee says, sincerely want to contribute to radical improvement. The reform effort can therefore be with the grain of the attitudes of a large number of the Commission staff at all levels from the most senior to the most recently arrived. Some may not yet share the broad desire for improvement, however. They would be well advised to recognise the weight of political and public opinion that propels the change and has given rise to the circumstances that now starkly confront the institution that I represent and indeed all of the European institutions. I also trust that those who may fear reform as a source of insecurity, of disturbance will, on reflection, come to understand that change is the path to security. It is institutions, administrations, companies which fail to anticipate and to respond productively to new demands that doom themselves and the people who work for them to insecurity and the turmoil that comes with it.
Against the background of all these considerations and the statements that we have heard from political leaders in this House today, I offer on behalf of the Commission-designate the pledge that the report will be treated as a fundamental ingredient in the Commission’s reform proposals. The February reform strategy will therefore address all of the issues raised, propose the relevant action and set out the means of taking that action.
I equally give the undertaking that the complete overhaul of the Commission’s financial management and control systems will be intensified, taking full account of the specific recommendations of the Committee on all matters including those raised by those who have so far spoken in the debate on subsidies and much else. In particular, the Commission pledges to move systematically from the traditional dependence on ex-ante financial control to an integrated system of financial management and auditing in which the responsibilities of individual officers are clearly defined, monitored and reinforced."@en1
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