Going through the motions with hearings
Posted by MEP Blogs on 01 15th, 2010 | no responses
Some two months ago, Mr Barroso was re-appointed as President of the European Commission. He is Head Honcho of The Commission which is the enforcer of all EU legislation. The Commission – an unelected body – is run by a College of 27 Commissioners, currently one for each member state. These Commissioners really are the political appointees of the Member States and are appointed for five years at a time. In theory they have very important positions, but historically, they have been weak individuals in thrall to the Director Generals – all 37 of them; these Director Generals are the real bosses and many of them have ruled for many years.
MEPS are given the chance to quiz these newly-appointed designate Commissioners on their suitability for the position. So this week I have been to some of these “hearings” – you can judge yourself, dear reader, whether you think that these hearings are nothing more than a charade, a cosmetic attempt to persuade the onlooker that the EC is a democratic institution.
I will first refer to the Commissioner designates of the two related Committees - the Budget Committee and the Budgetary Control Committees. Both candidates come from ex-Soviet countries... pretty well-known for their corrupt public administration, and I wonder what made them – in the eyes of Emperor Barroso- the most suitable candidates for these portfolio?. Janusz Lewandowski the commissioner-designate for Budget Planning and Programming is Polish and is presently an MEP. His main experience in his own country was as Vice-President of the Committee on the European Union in the period before his country joined, so his cooperation in a successful integration has probably something to do with his designation for the post of Commissioner for this portfolio. His lack of oratory skills probably played against him but the truth of the situation is that he did not answer any serious question that was posed to him (not that there were many serious questions...). I questioned him on the lack of analysis and consultation that characterized the budgeting process in the European Union and asked him about his plans to improve this process. I indicated to him that year after year 10 to 15% of the Budget remains unspent demonstrating to me that there is no proper system for responding to member states requests for funding specific programmes; just a random response to a general request for cash from the Directors General who only decide what to spend it on once they have the cash. Lewandowski response was, to put it politely, confused. His justification of this annual underspend was to blame the complexity of the rules governing the payment of subsidies. But this is simply not true. (Incidentally, I have heard this specious defence before; from the European Court of Auditors to justify the high level of what they call "error" and I call fraud).
In any event, Mr Lewandowski said he was not planning to make any changes to the existing budgeting procedure... so we will continue to suffer the Commission’s greed for taxpayers funds which will be exacerbated by the additional increase to the budget that the European Parliament proposes. On this last issue I also asked Mr. Lewandowski what he thought about the European Parliament’s decision to increase the level of EU expenditure; his response was utterly ridiculous, referring to the beauty of the co-decision process initiated by the Lisbon Treaty which in his words "would not allow the European Parliament to decide unilaterally on an increase to the budget". Of course – how stupid of me! (Incidentally, not one Conservative MEP attended this hearing). Algirdas Semeta, a Lithuanian, is the designated Commissioner responsible for Taxation, Audit and Anti-Fraud. His oratorial skills were worse than Lewandowski´s and he gave non-committal answers to every question put to him. As he has spoken on many occasions in favour of the idea of a European Public Public Prosecutor Office, I asked him to confirm whether or not he was still in favour, despite a foreseeable British veto? He responded with a vague reference to the co-decision process and inter-institutional cooperation..blah,blah...which, reading between the lines ,means I think that he WOULD go ahead! I also asked him to give us a date for the implementation of the new Code of Conduct for Commissioners which I have been repeatedly requesting since I was elected and which would be good to have in place before the new Commission is in office. Again, I got the same type of response, about cooperation between Commission and Parliament, discussion, blah, blah... but no date. Later in the day MEPS on the various related Committees met to evaluate the performance of the designate Commissioners. The general opinion was that the performance of both candidates was awfully poor. But the decision was not made to vote them down but just to postpone any decision to a later date. This is a strategy often used to appear tough at first but then to give in. I said that if this was the case there was no point in postponing the decision to reject the appointments – just reject them there and then!
A British Conservative MEP then added helpfully(?!) that maybe these designate Commissioners had the "potential to grow into the job" and we should give them some time.Disgraceful, I thought... that we hire trainees for Commissioners! Nevertheless the decision was postponed until next Tuesday... so we shall see!
MEPS are given the chance to quiz these newly-appointed designate Commissioners on their suitability for the position. So this week I have been to some of these “hearings” – you can judge yourself, dear reader, whether you think that these hearings are nothing more than a charade, a cosmetic attempt to persuade the onlooker that the EC is a democratic institution.
I will first refer to the Commissioner designates of the two related Committees - the Budget Committee and the Budgetary Control Committees. Both candidates come from ex-Soviet countries... pretty well-known for their corrupt public administration, and I wonder what made them – in the eyes of Emperor Barroso- the most suitable candidates for these portfolio?. Janusz Lewandowski the commissioner-designate for Budget Planning and Programming is Polish and is presently an MEP. His main experience in his own country was as Vice-President of the Committee on the European Union in the period before his country joined, so his cooperation in a successful integration has probably something to do with his designation for the post of Commissioner for this portfolio. His lack of oratory skills probably played against him but the truth of the situation is that he did not answer any serious question that was posed to him (not that there were many serious questions...). I questioned him on the lack of analysis and consultation that characterized the budgeting process in the European Union and asked him about his plans to improve this process. I indicated to him that year after year 10 to 15% of the Budget remains unspent demonstrating to me that there is no proper system for responding to member states requests for funding specific programmes; just a random response to a general request for cash from the Directors General who only decide what to spend it on once they have the cash. Lewandowski response was, to put it politely, confused. His justification of this annual underspend was to blame the complexity of the rules governing the payment of subsidies. But this is simply not true. (Incidentally, I have heard this specious defence before; from the European Court of Auditors to justify the high level of what they call "error" and I call fraud).
In any event, Mr Lewandowski said he was not planning to make any changes to the existing budgeting procedure... so we will continue to suffer the Commission’s greed for taxpayers funds which will be exacerbated by the additional increase to the budget that the European Parliament proposes. On this last issue I also asked Mr. Lewandowski what he thought about the European Parliament’s decision to increase the level of EU expenditure; his response was utterly ridiculous, referring to the beauty of the co-decision process initiated by the Lisbon Treaty which in his words "would not allow the European Parliament to decide unilaterally on an increase to the budget". Of course – how stupid of me! (Incidentally, not one Conservative MEP attended this hearing). Algirdas Semeta, a Lithuanian, is the designated Commissioner responsible for Taxation, Audit and Anti-Fraud. His oratorial skills were worse than Lewandowski´s and he gave non-committal answers to every question put to him. As he has spoken on many occasions in favour of the idea of a European Public Public Prosecutor Office, I asked him to confirm whether or not he was still in favour, despite a foreseeable British veto? He responded with a vague reference to the co-decision process and inter-institutional cooperation..blah,blah...which, reading between the lines ,means I think that he WOULD go ahead! I also asked him to give us a date for the implementation of the new Code of Conduct for Commissioners which I have been repeatedly requesting since I was elected and which would be good to have in place before the new Commission is in office. Again, I got the same type of response, about cooperation between Commission and Parliament, discussion, blah, blah... but no date. Later in the day MEPS on the various related Committees met to evaluate the performance of the designate Commissioners. The general opinion was that the performance of both candidates was awfully poor. But the decision was not made to vote them down but just to postpone any decision to a later date. This is a strategy often used to appear tough at first but then to give in. I said that if this was the case there was no point in postponing the decision to reject the appointments – just reject them there and then!
A British Conservative MEP then added helpfully(?!) that maybe these designate Commissioners had the "potential to grow into the job" and we should give them some time.Disgraceful, I thought... that we hire trainees for Commissioners! Nevertheless the decision was postponed until next Tuesday... so we shall see!
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