The Commission has just started up again, but before we return to our normal pace of work, R&D would like to share a few thoughts on 2001 with you.

Although the past year consolidated the outcomes of work that had already been started (e.g. the launch of the euro), we have observed – impotently, alas – a significant loss in the Commission’s key role in European integration, and the desire of certain member states to halt efforts to achieve it.

Sadly, this desire is also apparent at the level of certain Commissioners, who instead of working in a European spirit, remain too closely attached to the particular interests of their member states of origin.

The Commission is trying to mask the void of its political project with innumerable restructuring and decentralising exercises, but all they have achieved is a significant increase in the amount of bureaucracy, administrative insecurity and staff demotivation. This situation is not making our work any easier.

The other major concern for all of us has been Vice-President Kinnock’s planned reform. The project is muddled, woolly-headed and confused (notwithstanding the very considerable efforts of the High-Level Group, which was unable to reach unanimous conclusions), obscure (when the Administration transcribed the planned measures into legal texts, it received negative opinions from the Legal Service), and contrary to the interests of the staff (without a hint of transparency, the hierarchy has expanded its powers as far as colleagues’ careers and pay are concerned, and awarded themselves new benefits and premiums).

Furthermore, we do not think it makes any sense to launch an administrative reform without knowing what roles the various Institutions will have to play after the institutional reform (Convention chaired by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing).

The positions adopted by the various trade unions are dramatically varied: on the one hand, two unions support the reform quite blindly (one of them was 99% in agreement with the Administration as far back as July 2001); on the other, the four remaining unions (including R&D) must continue to oppose it resolutely if they are to continue defending staff interests and the European public service in general. This opposition will also be supported by trade unions and their Administrations in other key Institutions such as the European Parliament and the Council.

It seems superfluous at this stage to summarise all the information that has been disseminated by both sides (and particularly by the Administration), but our basic reasons for this opposition remain valid:

• the current draft reform provides for alterations to nearly all Articles in the Staff Regulations. The Council has been waiting years for this opportunity to undermine and nationalise the European public service. It only needs to amend a few Articles, as it sees fit, in order to get rid of what independence is left in our European public service, and therefore in the Commission;
• for all the promises in the protocol agreement, the proposal being sent to the Council contains unprecedented dangers for our salaries: there is no way of knowing yet the extent to which the Commission will allow staff to be laid off by Council budgetary provisions;
• the reason unremittingly adduced by Mr Kinnock to justify his reform is that he wants to link careers to merit, despite the fact that the current Staff Regulations already give him every opportunity to do so. In fact budgetary concerns already have the upper hand, and will play an even more decisive role when the Council receives the revised Regulations. Apart from a few ‘high flyers’, all staff will experience a gradual a slowdown in salary progression, and 10% of staff in each DG, Directorate and Unit will automatically be considered to be underperforming. That will leave the hierarchy free to get rid of staff it believes to be professionally under-performing, and of staff not prepared to obey blindly.

R&D is hugely grateful to all staff members who have supported us, and have shown their readiness and eagerness to act at General Staff Meetings, and at thematic and other meetings.

R&D hopes that it will continue to enjoy such support in the future.

As a new year dawns, R&D wishes you and your nearest and dearest all the best in terms of health, prosperity and well-being.

For the Executive Committee

Franco Ianniello

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