WRITTEN QUESTION E-0856/01 by Christopher Huhne (ELDR) to the Commission. Redeployment of staff.
Date: 2001-03-22
Institutions: European Parliament, Provisional data
Subjects: administration of the Institutions, institutional reform, personnel administration, reassignment

C 340 E/108

Official Journal of the European Communities

EN

4.12.2001

Nevertheless, exceptions to the guidelines to avoid pro-cyclical fiscal policy can be accepted when the
temporary increase in the deficit is due to a major tax reform (for example in Germany) provided that is
does not imply a risk of breaching the reference value for deficit
levels and does not exacerbates
inflationary pressures.

(2001/C 340 E/124)

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 (cid:129) 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 Enlargement and the European
the Directorate General
Community(cid:146)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.

the Europe Aid Office For Cooperation,

the Directorate General

for External Relations,

for Development,

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 (cid:129) including staff redeployments (cid:129) in the future.

Against that background, the most relevant information that is currently available in response to the
Honourable Member(cid:146)s question is that:

(cid:129) 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,

(cid:129) 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(cid:146)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.