Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-23-Speech-2-199"
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"en.20030923.5.2-199"2
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".
Mr President, I am extremely grateful to you and indeed to Mr Rothley for speaking long enough to enable me to get through the door. Mr Rothley did this without any pre-arrangement or knowledge, and, I guess, by extra-sensory perception.
I want to make it clear to the House that the list of criteria given by Mr Mulder in his Amendment No 3053 is realistic, but those criteria could usefully be clarified further. For instance, concerning the second criterion, I want it to be plainly evident that the proposed recruitment figures will enable the Commission to ensure geographical balance across the institution after enlargement. That is fundamental. In any case we want to avoid the addition of any further criteria which the Commission could not, frankly, feasibly meet in time for the second reading in this House.
The Commission has manifestly shown great care and deliberation in calculating needs. The minimum necessary number has been proposed. No-one in this House appears to be motivated by any intention to destabilise the already demanding processes of fulfilling the tasks arising from enlargement. When all of those facts are self-evident, I hope that there will be further reflection on the proposal to put posts in the reserve with all that implies in practical terms.
The House is also considering amendments which seek to make changes to the establishment plan. Amendment No 3502 proposes to reduce administrative and staffing costs by 10% in a number of policy areas and to place that 10% in the reserve with the aim of fostering the operational part of the programmes. I am bound to say that this would lead to a substantial delay in future recruitments. While I understand the political intention behind this amendment and realise that it is consistent with similar amendments in previous years, the Commission will have great difficulty in trying to fulfil the relevant programmes effectively without the appropriate level of administrative resources.
I do not need to tell Members who have been involved in efforts to introduce activity-based budgeting and greater transparency that we are not debating a technical matter. The Commission's responsibility for allocating resources to activities and for accounting for those allocations is a profoundly political issue.
As the internal allocation of human resources is decided, the Commission will give proper consideration to the concerns expressed by this Parliament in its budgetary resolution. But, for the sake of effective operation and responsibility, the administrative autonomy of our institutions must be maintained. That means that the conclusive decisions on establishment plans must, in the final analysis, continue to be for the Commission to make on the basis of properly calculated and manifest needs. I know that many Members will recognise the principle and its practicality. I have huge respect for the many qualities of Mr Mulder, but he is pre-eminently a practical man. I hope that those considerations will recommend themselves to him. I only give praise where it is due ...
... lavishly to Mr Mulder, but nevertheless, when it is due.
Apart from the cuts relating to the appropriations for posts, the Council has made a number of other cuts in the administrative budget of the Commission relating to delegations, auxiliaries, missions, meetings and representation offices. Faced with that I want to be absolutely clear: cutting the budget of our delegation offices would damage the last phase of the deconcentration, which is a process strongly favoured by this House and by the Commission. The proposed reduction on missions, meetings and representation offices will also inevitably have a negative impact on the enlargement process. The Commission needs the preliminary draft budget to be re-established in order to meet the administrative challenges of 2004 arising inevitably and foreseeably from enlargement. Expenditure in that area is neither excessive nor decorative. It is absolutely essential to good performance.
Also essential to good performance is the continuation of the normal transformation of posts needed for career development. If, as the Council had proposed, the transition to the new career structure - strongly and rightly supported by this House and indeed by the Council - was to be accompanied by the withholding of conventional patterns of promotion, the effect would understandably be confusing and demoralising for the staff of the European public service. However, I understand that the rapporteur proposes tabling an amendment to re-establish this routine practice. That would be a most welcome proposal and one that would give a reassuring and strongly cooperative signal to our staff, whose active and confident engagement in modernising change continues to be absolutely vital, as it always will be.
As the House will know and as my colleague Commissioner Schreyer has said, the Commission's Annual Policy Strategy for 2004 has identified three policy areas as priorities, namely enlargement, stability and sustainable growth. We also made it clear that on the second and third of those priorities the work is to be staffed by internal redeployment of Commission personnel.
The Commission also decided that in the further implementation of reform, the redeployment of resources should be accomplished with the assistance of the time-and-numbers-limited voluntary early retirement scheme.
In the case of enlargement, we recognised the reality that new human resources - new posts - were needed in order to meet the fresh and very substantial demands arising from the historic change. The rationale for the proposed increase is very straightforward: the accession of ten countries on 1 May 2004 will bring a 66% increase in the number of Member States, a 20% increase in the population of the Union and an 82% increase in working languages.
The Commission will handle the very diverse and substantive new demands with just 13% more staff: 3900 extra qualified people recruited over a transition period of five years from the beginning of 2004 through to the end of 2008. For 2004 - enlargement year - after 500 deployments of existing personnel within and between existing services, the net addition needed is 780 new posts.
To establish this figure, all current tasks performed by Commission services were classified on the basis of 'activity-based management'. Calculations were strictly based on the additional workload that we know will have to be borne by the Commission as a direct result of enlargement. This systematic approach was applied across all services and the information provided was then carefully screened for extra certainty. In short, we based our request for additional human resources on a rigorous and comprehensive analysis of real and proven operational needs.
I am very glad that representatives of the Council are here. I thank them for their courtesy in attending this debate, but I have to say candidly that, against this background, the cut of 272 posts proposed by Council in its judgment on the provisional draft budget is unwelcome and, in the light of enlargement, unrealistic.
I believe that it is vital for this Parliament to be made aware of the sombre reality that providing less than the 780 enlargement-related posts which we have proposed as essential for 2004 would have a major and very negative effect on the Commission's ability to manage the fresh task arising directly from the accession of ten new Member States which, universally and unanimously in Commission, Parliament and Council, we strongly advocate and stoutly support.
In making our proposal we were not seeking to grab posts. We were simply being realistic about what has to be done in and for a bigger Union. I am therefore pleased to see the horizontal amendment - Amendment No 3053 - tabled by Mr Mulder, which would facilitate the re-establishment of the number of posts requested. However, the fact that those posts would be in the reserve would produce significant practical problems. By definition, it would mean that the new posts would be made available to the services later, thereby further delaying the recruitment process. In the meantime, the resulting uncertainty and delay would seriously inhibit proper fulfilment of the tasks of the Commission."@en1
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