Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-02-28-Speech-3-026"
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"en.20010228.4.3-026"2
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". – Madam President, as I have said here before, the central purpose of the reform of the European Commission is to strengthen the performance, confidence and vital independence of the institution in order to ensure that the standards of service which the great majority of staff want to provide and the public has the right to expect are available to the European Union.
Thirdly, they should ensure that managers are responsible for their staff, are given the support that they need and are evaluated on their achievements. That is a radical change in established custom and practice. We propose to make that change in all respects in the interest of managers, the people that they manage and the institution.
Fourthly, the working conditions of Commission staff should better reflect the practices of national administrations in the Member States. Making provision for parental leave for Commission staff for the first time, improving working conditions and facilitating flexible employment arrangements such as part-time working are crucial to achieving equality of opportunity and practice and to improving career development.
Fifth, and finally, the Commission must progressively begin to make the necessary investment to ensure that staff can reinforce and broaden skills throughout their professional careers. We propose a five-fold increase in the budget available for training over the next five years. It will still not bring the Commission’s proportionate training expenditure up to the average level of European Union Member States. It will, however, be a significant advance that can be made without imposing undue pressures on the budget.
For the institutions to continue to discharge their obligations successfully they obviously need to continue to attract high-ability, multilingual staff, the majority of whom will spend most of their professional life in a public service outside their home country.
There is increased and increasing competition for qualified international staff in many areas including multilingual, multi-skilled secretaries, IT specialists, scientific researchers, international trade and market specialists, competition lawyers, financial experts of every kind and many more.
The Commission considers that the realities of expatriate work and life, of significant responsibilities and of rising demand for scarce skills must be reflected in the rewards package for the staff of the institutions. The results of a comprehensive independent study published last April commissioned originally by the Commission showed that the European civil service pay scale is higher than that of national civil servants, similar to that of comparable personnel in other international organisations, significantly lower than that of similarly qualified expatriate employees of multinationals and lower than that of diplomats. That reinforced our view that the pay scale is appropriate, reasonable and relevant to the role of the Commission and to the demands upon its staff and that in some respects improvement is necessary and justified.
Support for childcare for children under the age of six, for instance, is essential for equal opportunities and for the Commission to be able to attract staff, particularly women, from Member States with advanced systems. Similarly, payment of position premiums for functions that carry particularly heavy responsibility and/or workload is gradually becoming the norm in labour markets throughout the European Union. For the institution to retain its competitiveness as an international employer, it should be introduced in a targeted way in the Commission.
With these considerations in mind we have reviewed the structure of pay and rewards in order to identify and, where necessary, reform the outdated elements. We are consequently proposing to cut or to end allowances which have no continuing justification and to keep and, in some respects, improve those which correspond to objective conditions such as expatriate working life, bringing up children and, typically, having to work in more than one foreign language. Our pensions proposals, meanwhile, fulfil our undertaking to guarantee the long-term actuarial balance of the system and, naturally, existing pension rights will be honoured.
In compiling and adopting all of these proposals for consultation, we have naturally given close attention to budgetary implications. We have made very clear to this House and to the Council that all changes arising from reform and from pay and pension proposals will keep within the limits set by the relevant part of the Financial Perspective established by the Berlin Council in 1999. We will fulfil that commitment.
The ending of the 5.8% so-called temporary levy, in place under various names since the 1970s, will provide a substantial part of the resources for meeting obligations. The savings on allowances that are no longer justified will make other investments possible. We propose that the pay and pension system continues to be based on the fixed relationship with pay movements in the civil administrations of Member States. The total employment costs of the administration of the European institutions is, as a proportion of the budget, 1.9% of that budget. That compares favourably with the average bill for Member States calculated on a like-for-like basis of 13.1% of budget.
From the outset we have been working to fulfil that purpose by modernising structures and systems, by focusing more directly on priorities, by making unprecedented provision for the allocation of individual responsibility at all levels and by prioritising the use of people and of financial resources.
Throughout the period of the Financial Perspective to 2006 the costs of the administration as a proportion of GNP will be lower than they were in 1985. The documents adopted by the Commission today are, as the President of the Commission emphasised, proposals for consultation. In keeping with the method which we have used on all reform-related proposals each of the documents will be the subject of serious and detailed negotiations with staff representatives and wider consultations with staff over the coming four and a half months.
Constructive suggestions for improvement will be welcome and, as the record plainly shows, we heed them and we are ready to include them before decisions are finalised by the college. When they are finalised the decisions relating to changes that do not require alteration of the Staff Regulations will be implemented. The other decisions, such as those relating to career structure, pay and pensions, will be submitted as formal proposals for legislation to the Council and to this House. Some, like those on appraisals and promotions, will require consideration by the Interinstitutional Staff Regulations Committee.
Clearly, this Parliament, as a legislature, as a budgetary authority and as an employer, will rightly have close interest in all of these developments. I would draw attention to the importance of the changes that we are proposing in respect of the career structure. This affects Parliament in respect of all the areas I have just mentioned.
One important aspect and, indeed, a prior condition to making progress on the career structure is that we must reach agreement on a multiannual framework governing movements in unit wage costs allowing the institutions, Parliament, the Commission and the Council to set a robust and structured framework for developing the careers of their staff. I am sure that Parliament will give earnest and informed attention to this and, indeed, all other elements of the reform strategy. At my hearing in Parliament in 1999 I expressed the hope that we would be partners for progress. That hope has been fully realised.
I hope our partnership will continue. I commend the proposals which were adopted unanimously by the Commission for consultation today.
In the twelve months since the Prodi Commission adopted the Reform Strategy White Paper we have achieved significant advance in all those areas. Many honourable Members are familiar with the details and I thank them for their very close interest. We will return to those details on future occasions.
Compiling and implementing the very substantial changes has, of course, required immensely hard work and dedication. The people most directly involved have typically worked over 70-hour weeks throughout the last 15 or 16 months. I thank them and I pay tribute to them.
I also strongly commend the much larger numbers of staff for their diligent commitment in coping with extensive reorganisation and innovation – much of it very complex and testing – and simultaneously fulfilling the primary tasks of the Commission. Their ability and willingness to adapt to change is truly worthy of praise. It certainly contradicts the crude caricatures of the Eurocrat.
Such people need to have a modern working environment and progressive career prospects in order to enable them to do a good job even better, with more explicit recognition of their capabilities. That requires investing finance, time and effort. It also requires treating effective management, which is essential for a knowledge-based organisation like the Commission, as a core task of the institution.
Today the college unanimously adopted a series of proposals and guidelines for fulfilling those objectives, including guidelines on a new, more linear career system and on pay and pensions.
We will immediately carry out thorough consultations with staff and staff representatives on all these documents in the months until mid-July. These proposals are all available to the House. I will, therefore, briefly outline the principal purposes of the comprehensive changes. They are based firmly on the reality that the most valuable resource of any administration is its staff. The Commission is no exception and the fact that the general quality of staff is high is evident in the continuing essential policy performance of the Commission.
The institution has not, however, used human resources policies that are appropriate to the changing responsibilities and needs of the institution as an organisation. Our proposals therefore make provision for changes to ensure, first, that officials’ careers depend primarily on their demonstrated abilities, their proven performance and their willingness to accept responsibilities and that they should all have the benefit of objective annual appraisal. Secondly, the changes should ensure that career development opportunities for all staff are maximised by removing glass ceilings and rigidities and by providing officials with career guidance, appropriate training and real possibilities for greater mobility both inside the institution and externally."@en1
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