Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-11-16-Speech-4-235"

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"Mr President, I too should like to congratulate both the rapporteur and the draftsman of the opinion of the Committee on Legal Affairs. However, congratulations must, of course, go first and foremost to Mr Södermann; he has been highly receptive to numerous complaints from European citizens about maladministration in the Commission recruitment procedure and has drafted an own-initiative report in order to solve the problem. I am delighted that the Commission has accepted many of the Ombudsman's suggestions. However, I think there is still one lacuna: it refuses to design a system of integrated principles with clear guidelines which would result in completely objective recruitment competitions. This is the only way to limit arbitrariness and the resultant complaints – well-founded or not, that we do not know – about competitions with pre-determined results. Technical problems, however difficult, cannot obstruct the political objective of transparency. If they could, there would be no point in even discussing transparency. The President of the Commission himself has repeatedly assured us that transparency in the administration of European affairs is an absolute priority. I do not believe, when he said this, that he was unaware of the difficulties in achieving this objective. Allow me to finish by saying that the Commission has a obligation to comply with the recommendations of the European Ombudsman and to design a full system of objective examinations for two reasons: first, because it is legally obliged to do so under Article 255 of the Treaty, as revised by the Treaty of Amsterdam introducing the principle of transparency. This is why we are calling on the Council to work with the Commission and issue the relevant directive. And secondly, because, from a purely political point of view, its credibility depends on it. Unlike the Member States, with their long history, the European Union has only a short past, which is why it must create the expectation of something new. And the something new in this case is that it must apply best practices and avoid anything which experience tells us will damage its credibility within the Member States. The European Union needs to give a greater impression of reliability than the Member States, which have different ties with their citizens, such as ties of common descent; the European Union's main link is the respect which the citizens of Europe expect of it."@en1

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