WRITTEN QUESTION E-0856/01

by Christopher Huhne (ELDR) to the Commission

(22 March 2001)

Subject: Redeployment of staff

Will the Commission state what percentage of its total staff complement has been redeployed from one directorate-general to another in each of the last ten years? (In other words, express the total of net reductions in the complement of any DG in each year as a percentage of the total staff complement).

Answer given by Mr Kinnock on behalf of the Commission

(5 June 2001)

It is not possible for the Commission to provide a detailed answer for all services over the last 10 years in the form sought by the Honourable Member. This is because both the structure of services and the assignment of tasks to services have undergone so many modifications that attempts to quantify changes would not really be meaningful, or a justifiable use of time.

The scale of change has been particularly marked in the case of activities that have, or have had, high priority and rapid growth. In 1991, for example, all external relations were handled by two services - the Directorate General for External Economic Relations and the Directorate General for Development. During the subsequent 10 years, substantial numbers of personnel have been shifted to and between Directorates General dealing with external relations both as a result of internal redeployment and because of fresh allocations. In 2001, the prime services dealing with external relations are the Directorate General for Trade, the Directorate General for External Relations, the Europe Aid Office For Cooperation, the Directorate General for Development, the Directorate General for Enlargement and the European Community's Humanitarian Office (ECHO). When the number and structure of services have changed so much it is clearly not possible to give percentages by service.

In its Reform Strategy White Paper(1) the Commission has proposed more sophisticated mechanisms for Strategic Planning and Activity-Based Budgeting (Actions 12-16). These changes will begin to be implemented, on schedule, at the end of this year and, inter alia, they will result in an even more active policy of resource management - including staff redeployments - in the future.

Against that background, the most relevant information that is currently available in response to the Honourable Member's question is that:

- re-assignments of staff to other services have generally been made in order to increase resources in priority areas and to decrease staff where activities are reduced or ended. In recent times, the Commission has intensified efforts to allocate staff in ways that reflect changing priorities more closely,

- amongst the consequences of that were decisions of the new Commission in September 1999 which resulted in internal redeployment of some 1500 persons or 8 % of Commission staff. In addition, in 2000 the Commission conducted a Peer Group review of resources and priorities and that led, or will lead, to a total of 547 redeployments of personnel to priority areas of the Commission's work in 2001 and 2002. Details of these changes were given in the letter of proposed amendments to the Budget presented by the Commission to Parliament and Council on 11 September 2000.

(1) COM(2000) 200 final.