Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-03-26-Speech-3-119"
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". – Mr President, I am very pleased to be able to join the House on this debate on the report on the staff regulations, not only because it is always an honour to speak in this House but also because when there has been a very extended period of consideration and so many meetings, a certain family feeling develops. I am very pleased, therefore, to join so many friends tonight who have been my partners in discussion for what seems like an extremely long time. It was, however, a very worthwhile experience.
Those facts are, in brief: first that that average starting age of employment in the EU civil service is 32 years and 34 years for policy grade officials. Any calculations that made a full pension dependant on more than 35 years of employment and payments would consequently be entirely unrealistic.
Second, there is the fact that, as your rapporteurs point out, whilst the official pensionable age in the EU civil service is relatively low at 60 years, the average real retirement age of 63.1 years is about three years later than the average retirement age in Member States and one year later than in the Member State with the highest average retirement age.
In many respects therefore, we are implementing a core policy of the Lisbon Strategy and we have been doing so for several decades. Against that background and in the context of actuarial balance, the Commission has, in the course of negotiations, indicated some willingness to consider a degree of possible modification of the formal pensionable age. I should like to emphasise that there has been absolutely no conclusion of any kind on that point, or indeed on the other points.
In this and in all other matters we have strongly emphasised the need to ensure that the acquired rights and legitimate expectations of present staff are properly respected. That clearly manifests our position. It answers the first question in the oral question. For reasons of emphasis I repeat that any discussion of any potential changes would have to fulfil that requirement on acquired rights and legitimate expectations. Increased understanding of those facts induced the Council to ask Coreper to go away and, as the conclusions of the Council show, prepare a more detailed position by the April General Affairs Council.
In addition and to complete the picture, the GAC conclusions include Paragraph C that proposes further discussions on the weightings that are currently applied to EU civil service pensions in different Member States. I know that there are a number of amendments before the House relating to these weightings. The issue is a source of general concern in this House and indeed in the Council.
Since we are in negotiations, the Commission can only say at this juncture that we hear those concerns and while we may not support the amendments that have so far been offered, we are aware of the need to deal with this matter within the overall balance of the negotiated final package.
I reiterate that in this context, as well as in the wider spheres of reform, the Commission will at all times actively seek to uphold the accumulated rights and legitimate expectations of current staff. That is a principle that we uphold and it is one that is understood by Member States.
I also emphasise that we are conducting the negotiations on the basis of the fundamental principle that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. Any decision on any issue would be subject to reaching an agreement that is mutually satisfactory in overall terms.
I would add that we are engaged in complex and sometimes necessarily delicate negotiations; we are not engaged in polemical exchanges. We have confidence in the strength and the realism of our arguments and of our arithmetic. We will continue to strive to ensure that our partners in negotiation in the Council will accept both the arguments and the arithmetic. That, obviously, is our sustained and unchanging objective.
I regret that I have had to take time to give a detailed response on the important question put by honourable Members. I think you will understand that I wanted to give full answers to the questions on this important issue of pensions.
I should like to start by expressing my very deep gratitude to the rapporteurs, Mr Harbour and Mr Medina Ortega for their very thorough, thoughtful and constructive work on this important issue of the reform of the staff regulations. I also pay tribute to the intensive efforts undertaken by the other members of the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market and to the opinion-giving committees and their draftspersons. Very substantial work has been done in this House by everyone concerned. I know that the staff of the institutions will recognise the fact that serious and committed attention has been given by Parliament to their statute, their employment conditions and their future.
I warmly welcome the fact that the report from the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market before this House for debate reiterates strong support, as we have heard from the rapporteurs, for the overall reform package and does so in serious, practical terms.
In particular I welcome the realistic commitment to the importance of maintaining competitive levels of pay and pensions; a commitment to the introduction of what has become known in shorthand as a promotion guarantee on a collective basis – and I emphasise
; and a commitment to the inclusion in the staff regulations of 'the method' as the rational, economical and stable means for adjusting pay and pensions.
Moreover, I am pleased to say that the guidelines adopted by the General Affairs Council of 18-19 March 2003 echo many of the principles stated by Messrs Harbour and Medina Ortega in their explanatory statement and they are equally reflected in numerous amendments before us today. In particular, the guidelines in the Council conclusions – Paragraphs E, F and G respectively – express support for the broad pay and allowances proposals as a good basis, support the transitional arrangements for the new career system and express an openness towards the inclusion, on a finite basis, of the 'the method' in the Staff Regulations.
In response to the amendments, I will first list the many that the Commission can readily support. Indeed, I will summarise them because I do not want to test the patience of the House. Amendments Nos 7, 8, 9 and 48 on the strengthening of interinstitutional cooperation; Amendment No 20 on whistleblowing, Amendments Nos 12 and 14; Amendment No 13 on the opening of the assistant 1 to assistant 3 career bracket for specific duties including the duties of parliamentary ushers; Amendments Nos 9, 25, 48, 50 and 51 tabled by the rapporteurs relating to the status of the staff of the political groups – this means of course that the Commission cannot support Amendments Nos 32 and 60 which go well beyond the position set out wisely by the rapporteurs; Amendment No 17 on sexual harassment, we can accept; Amendment No 18, Amendment No 19, Amendments Nos 33, 34 and 35 on staff absences; Amendments Nos 42, 43 and 44 on disciplinary procedures; Amendment No 38 on the duration of the membership of the joint advisory committee for professional incompetence – that does not mean that it is in favour of incompetence, of course – it should be the joint advisory committee on professional incompetence.
There is second group of amendments on which the Commission is prepared to maintain an open mind during negotiations on the overall package or to accept some of the amendments, at least in part. The Commission cannot at this juncture give a positive response to amendments on weighted pensions. However, as I said, we are of course conscious of the widespread political concerns relating to pension coefficients and of the need to deal with the matter within the overall balance of the total package.
The Commission is prepared to accept Amendments Nos 52 and 54 on the limitation of levels of function of contract agents and on the duration of those contracts; Amendments Nos 14, 15, 26, 29 and 30 relate to central provisions in the context of a new career system, Article 5(3) on the criteria for appointments to the administrator and assistant function groups; Article 31 on the organisation of competitions for higher grades, including middle management grades, and Article 45 on the certification procedure for transfers from assistant to administrative function groups. All of these Articles have, I am glad to say, been subject to intense discussions in Council and Coreper. The compromises reached as recently as last week will be seen to reflect many, if not all, of the objectives aimed at by Members of this House in their amendments.
Article 31 now allows for the organisation of competitions, for instance, at administrator grades 9, 10, 11 or, on an exceptional basis, 12. Remembering that administrator grade 12 will correspond to a higher level than today's grade A4, the total number of candidates appointed to vacant posts at these grades will not exceed 20% of the total number of the appointments by external recruitment to the administrator function group in any one year. That compromise goes further than the outcome sought, for example, by Amendment No 26.
On the certification procedure, Article 45a now makes provision, in Paragraph 2, for the European Personnel Selection Office to determine the contents of all examinations organised by the institutions in order to ensure that the basic requirements of a transfer are met in a harmonised and consistent manner. That should make Amendment No 30 redundant. On Amendments Nos 58 and 59 on Members' assistants, this House knows the Commission has been and always will be very aware and sympathetic to the concerns about this issue in Parliament. Honourable Members will however be aware that of course several Member States do not share our joint enthusiasm and there is much work to be done independently of the negotiations on the staff statute.
On Amendments Nos 71 to 74 inclusive, on the recruitment of third country nationals with a permanent right of residence, the Commission is aware that there is a discussion amongst political groups about the possibility of finding a compromise arrangement on this issue which is of concern to many honourable Members. While sympathetic, the Commission is not in a position to accept these amendments as they are currently formulated and therefore I have to reserve my position on this question for the time being.
Finally, and I am grateful for the patience of the House, there are inevitably some amendments which the Commission cannot accept because they would tend to detract from the overall proposal. I will just pick a few, by no means an exhaustive list, but I must say it is outweighed by the number of amendments that we are readily accepting. We cannot accept Amendment No 16, Amendments Nos 14, 15, 26, 29, 30 and 75 – for the reason that I mentioned earlier, i.e. that they are unnecessary because of positive developments in Council on these questions; Amendments Nos 53, 55 and 76 on contract agents – because, as I said earlier, the Commission supports Amendments Nos 52 and 54 from the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market; Amendment No 32 on the extension of Article 50 to administrator grade 12 – we do not think that would be appropriate; Amendment No 63 on sexual harassment where the Commission supports the text put by the rapporteurs in Amendment No 17, and finally Amendment No 64 on the expatriation allowance, for the very direct reason that the Commission retains the view that the allowance for staff who are expatriate workers is objectively justified and indeed objectively necessary.
I think it will assist the House if I begin by referring to the issues raised in the oral question tabled by four political groups in the House. I was naturally going to highlight several pension issues in my statement this evening. I therefore welcome the questions because they give me the first opportunity since last Wednesday's General Affairs Council to focus explicitly and publicly on those matters. Responding to the question may mean that I take a little more time than was originally anticipated. I hope that in a good cause you will bear with me.
As the House knows, we have from the outset been committed to providing reforms in the Staff Regulations which would facilitate radical modernisation whilst upholding the current conditions of employment and improving the career development of members of the European Union civil service. The reasons for that are, I hope, recognised to be practical and justified and not insular or conservative.
There is a direct connection between reform, motivation and necessary material security. It is both realistic and relevant to acknowledge and to provide for that. This very substantial report from honourable Members recognises that practical reality and is a significant step towards the fulfilment of our commitments. I warmly thank all who have been engaged in the compilation of Parliament's view and I very much look forward to the adoption of the report in the House tomorrow morning.
To help to ensure clarity I should like to ask the House to refer to the draft guidelines that were adopted without change as the conclusions of the General Affairs Council of 18-19 March 2003. That document has been circulated. I regret that it is only in French and English at this juncture. If honourable Members look at Paragraph B of those conclusions they will see that the Council instructed Coreper to prepare a more detailed position, ‘on the issue of adaptation of the pension system’. If Members then turn to Paragraph D, they will see that the Council called on the Commission to ‘table by April 2003 a detailed, technical working document setting out a proposal to guarantee actuarial balance as from 1 January 2004’.
Examination of those paragraphs will show that the only request to the Commission was for a proposal for the methodology for a study which would then facilitate calculation of the contributions required to ensure actuarial balance in the pension system. Therefore there was no request to the Commission to submit, in the words of the question, a detailed document that includes a change in the pension scheme. Obviously, the Commission will not be producing such a document at any stage. We have never produced such a document and we are not going to do it now.
Achieving and maintaining an actuarial balance is clearly a somewhat different issue. As honourable Members will know, this has always been the obligation under the present Article 83(4) of the Staff Regulations, even though the requirement has not been made consistently operational. The Commission's proposal on modernisation of the staff regulations has always, therefore, included a commitment to ensure actuarial balance. Of course, the issue was discussed and negotiated in detail with the trade unions and in the interinstitutional staff regulations committee well before the Commission proposal went to the Council and came to this House last year.
So, there is nothing new about the Commission's commitment to secure actuarial balance. There is nothing that has not been fully debated and assessed. There is nothing that was not made known and made clear to Parliament and the members of the EU civil service and their staff representatives. All that the reference in the General Affairs Council conclusions relates to is the need for an up-to-date actuarial study that will enable the Council and the EU civil service to know, well before 1 January 2004, exactly what the contribution rates by Member States and by staff will be.
Meanwhile, the instruction to Coreper in the General Affairs Council conclusions is to provide a more detailed position on adaptation of the pension system that, in the words of the conclusions, is more consistent with the trends prevailing in Member States. That in itself is not surprising since it is obvious that demographic changes, the Lisbon strategy and indeed the policy approach of the Commission and of this House to so-called 'active ageing' will always ensure that Member State governments give attention to issues of retirement and pensions. That reality has in fact ensured that several Member State delegations have put forward a paper on pension parameters for the European Union civil service, and it is being considered by the Council.
Our response has been to point out that whilst we recognise the need to ensure consistency with the social and economic policy on employment and ageing which we, in the Commission, advocate, we also emphatically require proper account to be taken of some basic facts about the employment age profile of the European Union civil service, which are of great relevance to any consideration of pension parameters."@en1
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