Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-01-Speech-3-022"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20000301.4.3-022"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, last July, here in your presence, I made a solemn commitment to reform the Commission.
In September, we undertook to present a White Paper on reform, and today we are fulfilling that undertaking according to the conditions established in your presence. The Commission wishes to be judged on results and results alone – on what we achieve.
I would, however, remind you, and this is my final point, that the Commission is not the only Community institution. Parliament and the Council are also called upon to take up all the challenges presented by these reforms. The Commission has resolutely forged a path, and I hope that all the institutions will follow it right to the very end, in the service of the citizens of Europe, to achieve an ever-stronger and ever more transparent Europe.
I would just like to take a moment to recall the events of last July: the outgoing Commission had been in crisis, I had just been nominated and you gave your preliminary approval of that nomination. The climax of the chain of events was my undertaking to reform the Commission, to reform it thoroughly, completely revolutionising the Commission’s way of working. Today, that commitment has been fully discharged: you have the reform here, before you, in the form of an institutional White Paper which has just been adopted by the Commission. I would like to emphasise that, on that occasion too, the Commission voted unanimously, with one voice.
Briefly, these are the main points of the reform. One: definition of political priorities and translation of these into practical measures through the focused use of resources. This is at the heart of the system, and it is this, the setting of political priorities and the focused use of resources, which will enable the political sphere to assert its primacy and to take its responsibilities fully on board. In order to do this, we have created a completely new policy-planning mechanism, a system which will allow the College to set annual policy guidelines and to establish the budgetary procedure on the basis of these, to assign well-defined objectives to the Directorates-General and to keep the relationship between available resources and activities assigned under control, which is of fundamental importance. In this context, activity-based management is the key to ensuring coherence between objectives, actions and resources.
The second point is human resources. It is the central part of our reform. Our staff are the Commission’s best asset, its richest resource. They are extremely highly qualified, of a calibre which it is difficult, if not impossible, to find in the individual national administrations because of the nature of the recruitment methods and criteria used. This was the impression I received when I first became President of the Commission, and it has been confirmed by observation during my daily work. However, at the same time, I have found that morale amongst the Commission’s staff is very low. Previously, there was pride and pleasure taken in being part of a universally admired institution, but now staff are frequently demoralised by the unceasing criticism. All this has to change, and this is one of the main reasons for our reform. Recruitment, career development, mobility and disciplinary measures are all being based on completely new criteria: there will be greater emphasis on individual service, credible and, above all, verifiable performance appraisal systems, lifelong learning and a greater degree of management responsibility. These are the areas in which changes will be made.
The third point, which was also rather a sensitive, key issue in the recent crisis, is financial management. This is the hub of the administration which has to ensure efficiency and security. We are going to create a management and control system in every Directorate-General. At the moment, our control system is completely centralised; with the reform we will switch to a control system which combines decentralisation of management control with an efficient central audit system. This means that we will have a central financial service to provide financial management guidance and advice, decentralisation in every Directorate-General of the entire chain, that is of programmes, undertakings, contracts, expenditure and the related
control systems, and an external auditing service which will direct these operations. This is a complete revolution of the Commission’s way of working; it is a totally different method of organisation and it will require a totally different way of thinking.
We are familiar with the problems associated with this transitional stage, and it is this transition which has caused the greatest concern among our staff: we will therefore adopt the necessary security measures and put the necessary safeguards in place. In fact, the Commission desires this reform in order to become a model of excellence for the whole of Europe and the world. We also want to be exemplary in our advanced use of information technology. We want to be a model of a completely computerised administration. The Commission has been accused of being buried under piles of paper, and so we are going to become a paperless Commission. This will make the Commission itself more efficient and encourage the use of new technologies outside the Commission. This is not just a technical revolution, but a complete organisational revolution as well.
I shall leave to Neil Kinnock the task of explaining the details of the reform, but I would first like to thank him for the intelligence, enthusiasm and energy he has brought to this exercise. We would both like to thank all those who have worked on the project and all the Commission staff, who took part in the broadest debate ever organised at the Commission. I would stress that this style of debate is something very new and, in my opinion, it has forced us to radically change our way of thinking as well. The White Paper before us is also the product of contributions from the Commission staff: they knew that the Commission would have to undergo substantial reform in order to become, once again, that internationally-admired institution which was at the heart of European history.
The adoption of the White Paper marks the end of a chapter of history – and I hope that it will remain closed forever. Now we can focus on the future, on the challenges awaiting the Union and on the programme for 2000-2005, the contents of which we have outlined to you over the past few weeks. The very political essence of the reform is mirrored in the objectives of this five-year plan.
We need – the whole Union needs – a strong Commission, a Commission which has regained its ability to act as a political entity and is recognisable as such in all its actions. This is why we are redefining all our work priorities. This is why we are offloading all the activities which it is no longer appropriate for us to carry out – another important area of reform – in accordance with a principle of decentralisation and subsidiarity. For this reason, we are reforming the administrative machinery in order to create the necessary conditions for us to be able to carry out our work efficiently. We will make the best use of the resources at the Commission’s disposal, but they are very limited and we have almost exhausted them. We may need to come back to you and ask for additional resources to fund the new tasks which have been assigned to us and those which will be assigned to us in the future."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples