A4-0158/99

Resolution on improvements in the functioning of the Institutions without modification of the Treaties

The European Parliament,

- having regard to Declaration 32 attached to the Final Declaration of the Treaty of Amsterdam,

- having regard to its own earlier resolutions, in particular the resolutions of 14 May 1998 on the information and communication policy in the EU ((OJ C 167, 1.6.1998, p. 230.)), of 14 May 1998 on improvements in the functioning of the Institutions without modification of the Treaties ((OJ C 167, 1.6.1998, p. 211. )), of 12 January 1999 on openness in the European Union ((Minutes of that Sitting, Part II, Item 3.)), of 13 January 1999 on the institutional implications of the approval by the European Parliament of the nomination of the President of the Commission and the independence of the Members of the Commission ((Minutes of that Sitting, Part II, Item 9.)), of 14 January 1999 on improving the financial management of the Commission ((Minutes of that Sitting, Part II, Item 1.)) and of 11 February 1999 on the decision-making process in the Council in an enlarged Europe ((Minutes of that Sitting, Part II, Item 4.)),

- having regard to Rule 148 of its Rules of Procedure,

- having regard to the report of the Committee on Institutional Affairs and the opinions of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs and the Committee on Civil Liberties and Internal Affairs (A4-0158/99),

A. whereas the Amsterdam Treaty did not resolve a number of important institutional issues which will again have to be tackled in a future Intergovernmental Conference and noting in this regard the Commission's position as outlined in Agenda 2000 that such a Conference be convened as soon as possible after 2000,

B. whereas, however, a number of significant improvements can be made to the functioning of European Union institutions, even in the absence of formal Treaty change,

C. whereas recent events have underlined the importance, in particular, of reforms in the functioning of the Commission, especially in terms of reducing and rationalising Commission portfolios, achieving better internal coordination, ensuring the right balance between the collective and individual responsibility of Commissioners, further reinforcing the Commission's independence and improving its managerial efficiency,

D. whereas the recent expansion in the number of decentralised EU agencies and bodies poses a number of important questions about the functional reasons for such decentralisation and about the democratic accountability of these agencies and bodies, whereas there needs to be, in consequence, a better coordinated institutional framework for decentralised agencies and bodies,

E. whereas the European Parliament will be in a better position to tackle the new challenges that are facing it if it concentrates more on core tasks, improves its own internal workings and re-examines the way that it presents itself to the public,

F. whereas inter-institutional cooperation should also be stepped up in a number of areas, whereas it would also be highly desirable if there were to be greater mobility and flexibility between different bodies belonging to the European civil service and between them and national civil services,

Reforming the Commission

1. Welcomes the internal management reviews that have been initiated within the Commission and recalls the undertakings made by the President of the Commission at the plenary session in January 1999; considers, however, that the process of Commission reform needs to be further reinforced and accelerated, in accordance with the recommendations made in 1999 by Parliament and its Committee on Budgetary Control;

As regards the reduction and rationalisation of Commission portfolios

2. Considers that a more systematic attempt should be made to identify 'real¨ portfolios, and then to adjust the structures of the Commission and of its directorates-general to those real needs, with due regard for the EU's new policies and its increased powers and responsibilities;

3. Believes that teams of Commissioners should be established for each subject area, with no distinction being drawn between large and small states as regards the role and status of Commissioners;

4. Believes that the President of the Commission should not hesitate to use the new authority conferred by Declaration 32 attached to the Final Declaration of the Treaty of Amsterdam to make any necessary adaptations to the structure of the Commission in the light of practical experience, and also to transfer Commissioners from one portfolio to another on the basis of their performance on the job;

5. Recalls, however, that the European Parliament should be notified in advance of any such changes, and be given the opportunity to comment, and, if necessary, hold new hearings with the individual Commissioners concerned;

As regards better coordination of the Commission's work

6. Believes that the coordinating political role of the Commission's President and administrative role of its Secretary-General needs to be reinforced in line with the Amsterdam Treaty, and that current reforms aimed at decentralisation should not be at the expense of the Commission's overall cohesion;

As regards ensuring the correct balance between collective and individual responsibility within the Commission

7. Emphasises the continued importance of collective responsibility for the general political actions of the Commission, but believes that this should not exempt individual Commissioners from the consequences not only of any personal misconduct, but also of any incompetent or negligent management of their own areas of responsibility;

8. Pending Treaty change to Articles 157 and 160 EC (future Articles 213 and 216 EC) (which should be combined into a single article and give the European Parliament the same rights as the Council), calls for the establishment of clearer guidelines as to what is meant in Article 160 EC (future Article 216 EC) by when 'a Member of the Commission no longer fulfils the conditions required for the fulfilment of his duties¨, and also by the notion of 'serious misconduct¨; further insists that the President of the Commission should not hesitate to apply the provisions of Articles 157 and 160 EC (future Articles 213 and 216 EC) where this proves to be necessary;

9. Considers that the general principle of the collective responsibility of the Commission is an important principle which needs to be reaffirmed, but believes that this should not absolve individual Commissioners from the consequences either of any personal misuse of funds or of any individual incompetence or negligence in managing their own sphere of responsibility; calls, therefore, for the establishment of a procedure to enable Commissioners to be called to account and for their personal responsibility to be invoked where the College of Commissioners as a whole is not implicated;

10. Suggests in this context that the European Parliament might, as a last resort, adopt resolutions apportioning blame to a particular Commissioner; is of the opinion that the political consequences of such resolutions should be defined in a revised code of conduct of the European Parliament and the Commission; and that the quorum required for such a resolution should be set at a high level;

As regards appointment to senior posts and the cabinet system

11. Considers that the current need for geographical and political balance among senior officials in the Commission may reduce the independence and efficiency of the European civil service and that this problem will become even more acute after future EU enlargement; calls, therefore, for ability and relevant experience to play a greater role in the appointments process;

12. Considers that the present cabinet system needs reform going beyond that already promised by President Santer; calls, in particular, for cabinets to have no more than six members, and with only one or at most two members of the same nationality as their Commissioner; further believes that cabinet members from outside the Commission should be put on the same footing as normal applicants to the Commission before moving on elsewhere within the Commission and that those who are Commission officials should have a normal career progression when leaving the cabinet, and should not be able to jump more than one grade;

13. Considers that the Commission's widespread use of temporary staff on secondment or leave from national civil services or from industry should be very carefully monitored to ensure that the advantages of flexibility and introduction of new expertise outweigh the risks of conflict between the Commission requirement of independence and national and sectoral interests;

As regards improving the managerial efficiency of the Commission

14. Believes that the Commission's management culture is insufficiently adapted to the new challenges facing it; in particular that it is better adapted to drafting new legislation and developing new policy initiatives rather than the increasingly important task of managing existing programmes, and that it is still too cumbersome and bureaucratic in its internal procedures; notes that this analysis has now been fully confirmed by the conclusions of the first report of the Group of Experts;

15. Further notes that the Commission's relatively small staff has to rely heavily on outside consultants and other agents, and has not established the most appropriate and transparent mechanisms for choosing and supervising such persons, or for adjudicating tenders and contracts; calls, therefore, for this situation to be remedied as soon as possible;

16. In this context calls on the Commission to step up its efforts to reduce the proportion of vacant posts to 2% as soon as possible;

17. Insists that the new Commission attach a higher priority than in the past to improving its internal management, without which it will not be able to re-establish its full credibility;

18. Calls for the management reforms initiated by the Commission to be further developed and systematically implemented, for redeployment and retraining of Commission staff to be stepped up, for prompter and tougher disciplinary measures to be taken when necessary, and for greater emphasis on new management techniques and on the establishment of clearer management objectives and longer-term forward planning;

19. Further calls for periodic external audits of the way in which the Commission is working and its interface with European citizens and with outside organisations;

20. Reiterates that much greater attention should be paid in the future as to whether there are sufficient managerial and other resources available when adopting new policy commitments and programmes, and that the failure to do this by all EU institutions was a central cause of the recent crisis within the Commission;

Better coordinated institutional framework for the decentralised agencies and bodies

21. Believes that the recent proliferation of decentralised EU agencies and bodies may have advantages but also disadvantages, such as fragmentation of responsibilities and difficulties of ensuring accountability to the centre;

22. Fears that at least some of the new agencies and bodies have been decentralised more because of a national spoils system than for real functional reasons, and that future EU enlargement could thus greatly accentuate the problem;

23. Believes that there needs to be a much more thorough debate prior to the establishment of any future decentralised agency or body on the functional reasons for its creation, and on alternative courses of action;

24. Notes that the means of ensuring democratic accountability of decentralised agencies and bodies are currently inadequate, and that the degree of formal involvement of the European Parliament, for example, varies considerably from one agency to another;

25. Calls, therefore, for the establishment of a coherent overall institutional framework for these agencies and bodies, and stresses the need for more consistent rules on accounting obligations to the European Parliament;

26. Urges, therefore, all the relevant parliamentary committees to increase their efforts to monitor the activities of these bodies by establishing regular contacts with their directors, providing opportunities to debate the agencies' draft work programmes and have an input into them, encouraging exchanges and coordination meetings between the agencies' staff and the secretariats of committees;

27. Takes the view that agencies and bodies should be accountable to all EU institutions, including the European Parliament, with respect to both their budget and their work programme; is of the opinion that agencies and bodies should explicitly be called upon to offer technical back-up and impartial advice to all EU institutions and not simply to the Commission or national governments; believes, therefore, that regulations establishing agencies need to follow common principles, taking into account the specific missions of each body, and that their budgetary provisions should be harmonised;

28. Takes the view, furthermore, that the European Parliament should have full access to all information about decision-making in the agencies' managing bodies, and be able to send observers to the meetings of these bodies, thus ensuring that their activities are subject to democratic control and respond to the policy priorities of the European Parliament;

29. Undertakes to carry out regular evaluations of whether the agencies are meeting the objectives for which they were initially established and, if necessary, examine alternative ways of carrying out those objectives; therefore wishes to be regularly informed through an annual report;

European Parliament reforms

30. Believes that a number of measures should be taken to improve its own internal workings, so that it can make the most of the new powers that it has gained in recent years and properly tackle the new challenges that it is facing;

A greater concentration on core tasks

31. Considers that a high priority and adequate resources need to be given to its new legislative tasks, so that more background information is provided, there is broader-based consultation and texts reach higher legal and linguistic standards;

32. Believes, however, that increasing the emphasis on legislative work should not lead to the neglect of other essential tasks, and that, in particular, its role in supervising the implementation and management of existing Community policies and programmes is likely to grow with time;

33. Calls, therefore, for more attention and resources to be devoted to systematic 'scrutinising¨ and control of Community policy programme implementation and management;

34. Considers that its existing internal procedures for handling comitology texts need to be reviewed and strengthened;

35. Considers that Parliament should, during its part-sessions, concentrate more on major European political issues so as to raise its profile;

Streamlining voting procedures

36. Believes that the amount of time that Members spend voting in both committee and plenary is currently excessive, and that procedures need to be reviewed which would improve this situation without unfairly curtailing Members' existing rights to table amendments;

37. Calls, in this context, for one or more committee room(s) to be equipped with electronic voting facilities, and also calls for greater plenary recourse to rules that are currently under-utilised, such as Rule 114 on block votes on groups of amendments, Rule 150(5) on drafting new reports if a large number of amendments have been tabled to an initial report, and Rule 52;

38. Further considers that mutually contradictory amendments on behalf of a single group should be forbidden, so that disputes on issues are encouraged to be resolved within a group rather than in lengthy plenary votes;

Greater coherence of resolutions adopted by Parliament

39. Emphasises the need for keeping a more systematic check on the coherence of resolutions adopted by the European Parliament, so that contradictory demands are avoided to a greater extent than at present, and so that Parliament's positions on horizontal issues, such as institutional questions, are as consistent as possible;

40. Believes that own initiative reports, in particular, should not be able to be adopted in plenary on low turnouts, and that a sufficiently high quorum requirement should be set for the adoption of such reports;

Better deployment of Parliament staff

41. Calls for the Bureau's new decision on staff mobility to be complemented by greater flexibility between Parliament's directorates-general, so that staff working in its committees, research and information services work more closely together in the future;

42. Calls for ability and expertise to be given more emphasis in future staff promotions than political or nationality considerations, and that bringing in staff from outside the institution is to be avoided, as proposed above for the Commission;

43. Reiterates its calls for better integration of legal and linguistic expertise in the course of preparing its legislative and other texts, notably as regards the preparation of amendments;

44. Notes that it is to carry out democratic supervision and other responsibilities in the field of EMU to a far greater extent than in the past, and calls for a reinforcement of its in-house economic analysis capacity;

45. Further believes that Parliament's core responsibilities in fields subject to co-decision often require considerable scientific and technical knowledge and also calls for these to be reinforced, particularly by improving cooperation with universities and research centres;

Improved public presentation of its activities

46. Calls for the establishment, at the latest by October 1999, of a well equipped and accessible visitors' info-centre, which the public could enter without having to pass through security controls or go on a full-scale guided tour, and where Parliament documents and audio-visual material could also be provided. Calls, in this context, for video-conferencing equipment to be provided on the European Parliament's premises;

47. Welcomes the fact that a wider range of information products on the Parliament is being prepared in the run-up to the European elections, but calls for this to be further extended in the future, and for more sustained efforts to target information publications at specific audiences, such as school groups and young people, and others with special interests;

48. Calls for further improvement to the European Parliament's web-site, and for the establishment of clear criteria for the acceptance and presentation of European Parliament material both on its own Intranet and on the Internet;

Improved inter-institutional cooperation

49. Believes that inter-institutional cooperation needs to be stepped up not only in the field of information policy, as emphasised in its resolution of 14 May 1998 on the information and communication policy in the EU, but also in a number of other functional areas such as data bases, computer policy, the electronic transmission of EU documents, and buildings policy;

50. Considers increased inter-institutional cooperation in the field of asylum, immigration and the free movement of people as an important signal of the willingness of the Member States to introduce co-decision for these policies as provided for by the Treaty of Amsterdam;

51. Considers that the annual legislative programme should become a more important instrument of inter-institutional cooperation, but with more detail being provided by the Commission as to what is envisaged in each policy area, and with a new timetable for its consideration, so that national and regional parliaments are given the opportunity to comment before more detailed examination by the Parliament and other Community institutions;

52. Calls for enhanced cooperation between the European Parliament and the Commission in the field of comitology in order to ensure more satisfactory improvement of existing agreements and to obtain, for example, a common numbering system for implementing measures transmitted by the Commission to the Parliament and also more direct transmission of texts;

53. Believes that a revised code of conduct for Commission/European Parliament relations should be drawn up, which would integrate recent agreements and ensure a more responsive Commission while respecting its autonomy, and that this should come into force in time for the next Commission;

54. Believes that greater mobility and flexibility between different bodies of European civil servants, including traineeships and intensified exchanges between them and national civil servants, would help to increase professionalism, break down barriers between civil servants across Europe and develop greater awareness of Europe-wide problems;

55. Considers that a more ambitious longer-term goal would be to create a more integrated European civil service structure, with certain common elements and providing for greater mobility and flexibility, yet without losing sight of the distinct needs and cultures of each institution;

56. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission and the parliaments and governments of the Member States.