Brussels, 17 April 2024

Note for the attention of Mr Johannes HAHN,

Commissioner for Budget and Administration

Subject: Reinforced governance of the Commission towards Agencies and other external bodies

Faced with the proliferation of new agencies and JUs, the TUs have denounced all the limitations of the governance ensured by the Commission, clearly incapable of ensuring the irreproachable functioning and rigorous and uniform application of the Staff Regulations, as shown by the extent of the sometimes very serious abuses which have been observed.

Similarly, on several occasions, particularly in the context of the discharge exercises, the European Parliament in turn noted sometimes very serious malfunctions affecting the agencies and the JUs, and called on the Commission to fully carry out its governance duties.

Moreover, as regards the problems relating to the management of executive agencies, the parent Directorates-General did not always seem prepared to exercise their responsibilities in full, hiding behind the alleged autonomy of the agencies, preventing them from intervening. This is despite a legal framework that clearly sets out their responsibilities. 

In these circumstances, it was inevitable, as we have denounced, that colleagues assigned to the agencies and to JUS would feel frustrated at being regarded as completely unacceptable, even ‘second-class’, staff. 

In this context, we have taken note with satisfaction, under your leadership, of the Commission’s willingness to significantly strengthen its governance in this regard.

On the one hand, we have already seen this change of approach in the attention and responses to the requests from the TUs concerning the problems affecting Fusion For Energy (F4E), and in this regard we would like to thank you and Commissioner Simson as well as the services of the SG, DG HR and DG ENER.

It is now essential that DG ENER and DG HR continue and even reinforce their efforts to ensure the irreproachable implementation of all the procedures that F4E is called upon to organise, also but not only, in the context of the announced reorganisation, while ensuring a proper place for the necessary social dialogue within the agency. 

It should be noted, however, that the same attention must be paid to the malfunctions observed in other executive and decentralised agencies.

On the other hand, we welcomed the fact that in 2023, the Corporate Management Board called for the setting up of an inter-service group composed of central services to reflect on possible improvements concerning decentralised agencies and that preliminary results had already been communicated to it, asking for further reflection.

It is pointless to stress that this is a matter for thousands of colleagues and that we are following with the utmost attention.

In this connection, it seems important to involve staff representatives in these discussions, keeping them informed of the results already achieved, of the proposed follow-up to failures such as the introduction of a Commission veto right in the decision-making of the agencies’ boards, and of other ongoing reflections. 

In view of the above, we call for a social dialogue meeting be convened on this issue to pursue an effective and fruitful dialogue.

C. Sebastiani / R.Trujillo	T. Weber	N. Mavraganis	G. Vlandas / H. Conefrey
Alliance	Generation 2004	USF	RS- U4U/USHU

Copy:

Ms K. Simson, Commissioner in charge of Energy

Ms J. Petkova, Director of Coordination and Administration, Cabinet of President von der Leyen

Mr D. Müller, Head of cabinet Hahn

Ms S. Bikar, Deputy Head of Cabinet Hahn

Mr S. Grassi, Head of cabinet Simson

Mr P. Kadarik, Deputy Head of Cabinet Simson

Ms I. Juhansone, Secretary-General

Mr C. Roques, Director-General (acting)  DG HR

Ms S. Riso, Director-General DG BUDG

Mr D. Calleja Crespo, Director-General, Legal Service

Ms D. Juul-Joergensen, Director-General DG ENER

Mr M. Garribba, Deputy Director-General ENER DDG2

Mr M. Lachaise, Director F4E

Staff