What is the
outcry against - not the nomination itself but - the way Martin Selmayr was
nominated to the position of the Secretary General of the European Commission?
His personality and ways certainly play a role but everybody agrees, at least
publicly, that he is suitable for the post. He gained both acclaim and enmity
not just as a devote European (what is not always the way to please member
state representatives) but also as an efficient or rather effective operator,
who could be ruthless and manipulative at times. Politically speaking, however,
his power will be more moderate while he is expected to shake up the apparatus
of the Commission. Some parts and ways of it are namely too slow and too
bureaucratic. This will no doubt benefit the EU as a whole but can also
strengthen the position of the Commission in the sensitive balance between the
three main institutions, the Council, the Parliament and the Commission.
Surprisingly
after that, everybody talks only about the procedure, not the person. Heads of
cabinet were parachuted to director and director general positions already
several times (including the head or cabinet of the previous president of the
Commission, Barroso). The trade unions always loudly complained every time this
occured but this never hit the threshold of attention of anybody outside the
Commission.
Apart from this
concrete case, deeper unclarities are reflected in the debate. The general rule
in the EU public service is that a post has to be filled by competition when a
person is promoted into it. Moving officials or even managers
"horizontally" can be done directly. Members and heads of cabinets of
commissioners (as opposed to assistants of MEPs) are officials. They have,
however, a political role and their direct nomination to senior management
posts (director and director general) suggests that their seniority is higher
than that of other officials commanding a team of comparable size. If these
assumptions hold, the only complaint could be about the timing and the secrecy
- which hollowed out the nomination right of the Commission as a body given the
importance of the position. Leaving that aside, there are two questions
concerning the justification of the above way of nomination: the equivalence of
a cabinet post to another management post and then nomination of persons in a
similar grade without competition.
Let me first
mention a case for the "parachuting" of cabinet members and heads.
Not nly Commissioners but also judges of the
European Court of Justice and members of the Court of Auditors are
delegated by the member states and their mandates expire in different points of
time. One new candidate declared already before the nomination to want to bring
totally new own staff and thus alo members of the cabinet would lose their jobs.
As members of the cabinet are public servants, their job security has to be
maintained and there is no reason why they should be forced to accept a
position junior to their previous one, by the way, this would be a waste of
their talent and experience. A competition in this case would just mean
insecurity for them and then further search.
Should cabinet
members and heads be public servants? They need to navigate not only the
political arena but also the organisation and experience and knowledge of this
organisation is a significant asset as well as the knowledge acquired in a
cabinet is for the organisation when they return to it. Their status can ensure
professionality, objectivity and also continuity. On the other hand the basic
question is how their status has or has not to be influenced by tue Commission
becoming more political. This change as declared by president Juncker when he
came in but the Council and the Parliament neither approved nor disapproved
this. When they don't want to treat the cabinets as public service but as a
political team, they mqy subscribe to a politicisatin of the Commission to a
degree even Juncker didn't foresee.
The other
question concerns nomination policies and competition. Here the first argument
would be that even when Selmayr is the best person for the job, he didn't get
the chance to demonstrate it. And this is the case for all nominations of a
person of the grade ofmthe new position. I can see only one argument in favour:
this makes compulsory mobility (which can be subject of a separate discussion
but let's take it as granted) of management staff. In a lot of commercial
organisations there is another case of nomination which is not subject to
competition: the nomination of the immediate number two, like the deputy. Peters
principle aside, there are a number of cases where the person has demonstrated
sufficient knowledge and capabilities to take over and the superiors want to
nominate the person. There is an infinitely slim chance that an external
candidate can beat the internal one as almost all objective and subjective
factors are pointing to the same direction.
Thus, if we want
to be coherent, it has to be decided whether cabinet members and heads wre to
be treated as officials, what their equvalence to managers is and whether
moving "horizontally" without competition is fair and practical. I
also propose, however, to consider opening the posibility of nominating the
immediate subordinate of a manager without competition. As explained above, the
chances of an external to win are minimal and therefore the energy wasted in
preparing their application and the wohle selection process could be used for better purposes.
