Kallas: Commission must address 'rigid' recruitment system 

Siim Kallas is a vice-president of the European Commission and current holder of the administration, audit and anti-fraud portfolio. 

He has previously served as prime minister, finance minister and foreign minister of his native Estonia. 

He was speaking to Andrew Williams and Daniela-Vincenti Mitchener. 

To read the first article based on this interview, please click here.

To read a second article based on this interview, please click here.

The European Commission is about to start another mandate, and you have been put forward by the government of Estonia to serve a second term. You are a Commission vice-president and a former prime minister of your country. You can harbour hopes of a significant portfolio this time around, and Estonia put you forward again with this in mind. 

How do you envisage your future in the Commission? Which portfolio would you like? 

Estonia put me forward again with the idea that administration is not important enough, which is probably a questionable assumption, because if people here in Brussels heard that some people in Estonia do not consider this a very important portfolio, then they'd [smacks his forehead]. 

It has of course been a very intensive portfolio and a very heavy five years, clearly. It needed a serious commitment to survive, and for the Commission to survive and to avoid any kind of failures, which could be in fiscal governance, personal matters, anywhere. It has been quite a difficult job. 

Concerning the future, the beginning of this year, I was asked whether I would continue on the same portfolio, and I said 'OK, why not?' if the job is clear. There are certain advantages of being already in and knowing what the work looks like, but from the other side, there is of course the question 'Can you have such energy for five more years?' 

Five years is a huge amount of time, a long time, and to continue ten years…we rotate director-generals after five years in the position and quite strongly follow this principle, so why should commissioners continue ten years? This is a basic question. 

But it is mostly in the hands of the president. It is a reflection for the president. I am ready to continue with the same portfolio, but of course, I also have signals that there may be some return to my economic soul, my economic blood circulation, [which] would also be highly appreciated. 

I'm an economist, and if I think 'where have the most creative periods in my life been?', these have been in economics. Of course, I don't underestimate what I've done here [on administration, audit and anti-fraud], but of course I'm an economist and that's my answer. 

But again, whatever my job I will take it seriously, and the president has to accommodate so many calculations and observations in forming the new Commission. I am quite flexible in this sense, and we'll see what the president decides. 

Are you eyeing Joaquín Almunia's position as economic and monetary affairs commissioner? 

I don't want to be so concrete, but of course, I must say that my experience as finance minister and central bank governor is mostly linked to economic and monetary affairs. But there is one detail: Estonia is not a member of the euro, and that is probably a certain disadvantage in applying for this portfolio. 

It's too early to be concrete, and I'll wait for the president. The president will have a very difficult task putting the Commission together this time. I hope that there will be a big challenge, whether it's the same portfolio or another, and I will take it seriously anyway. 

Let's take a look at your portfolio. As you said, they've been five challenging years. What do you think has been your greatest success, and what would you have done differently? 

If I look back, there are some very big issues. One was the recruitment of personnel from the new member states: 4,600 well ahead of schedule. 

This was a huge exercise, because you have to consider, first of all, the enormous selection process. Second is finding the right jobs for the right people, and having a geographical and gender balance. 

On the gender balance, of course, the newcomers are much higher in terms of their percentage of women, so overall, gender balance has improved, but the biggest thing was just to do it, because to take in 4,600 people was quite a big exercise. 

Secondly, the biggest job for me personally was of course the discharge. Clearly, we can report an improvement in financial governance, because if I consider what has occupied my agenda the most, it was the discharge process. Inside the Commission and outside the Commission. It was very busy and a huge experience dealing with the European Parliament, and of course there has been an improvement. 

It's not yet fully positive, but in the next couple of weeks, we'll see the Court of Auditors report, and I can only say that it is once again better than last year, so it's an improvement. 

Definitely, if I think about the next period, then this must continue, and this will be one of the key issues where we should think of how to get rid of this bad perception, which is not adequate: this will remain one of the main challenges of this portfolio. 

So, those are two things: then there are things that I am particularly happy with, because they were initiated by me and my team. You have to take people in from the new member states anyway, and you have to deal with discharge anyway, for better or worse. Now, of course I am happy with the results, but these things would have happened anyway. 

The third thing is the transparency initiative as a political project, clearly. In all stages of this project I was mostly pessimistic. All my colleagues were much more positive about the outcome. Of course, they were right in the end, and I am very happy. I never believed that this opening of information about the beneficiaries of EU subsidies would take place. 

I hoped that half of the countries would do it under huge pressure from the press as well as public opinion, but was expecting stubborn resistance in some member states. Nevertheless, everything happened and in 2006 the political decision was taken. 

There is also the lobby register: we have just had a huge event again with the publication of the Burson-Marsteller report. But again, as a politician I tell you that the register is a fact. So we can discuss whether it's perfect or imperfect, but it is anyway a big cultural and mental breakthrough. 

You cannot say that lobbying is totally obscure, something which it was in 2004. Now it is a reality. 

Another point is buildings policy, including the Rue de la Loi project with the Brussels Region. I'm very happy about receiving positive reflections from the Belgian authorities. They said that nobody in the Commission had ever before been so interested in Belgian issues, and looking for cooperation, which was of course pleasant to hear. 

Our project of refurbishing this quarter will of course take some years to materialise, but this was just one element. Another element is the structure of buildings policy, based on open tenders – again transparency – and based on open competition, which was not the case before. 

The third thing, which will probably have a huge impact in the future, was initiating the opening up of European schools. To solve the impasse in the development of these schools, we proposed, together with the chairman of the board of the European schools, a reform programme which was quite ambitious, and which was decided and adopted by member states in May. 

This has created a 'European school' brand which can emerge everywhere, and if you look at it – I've had many debates in my own country – it's a certain element which must accompany the free movement of specialist skills and highly sophisticated labour. 

Of course, if you want to hire some highly educated people in Estonia, then they come with family – where should they put their children? To assist them, interoperability of schools becomes very, very important. 

A little bit like international schools and the international baccalaureate? 

A little bit, yes, but – at least in my country – they have not been very happy about the international baccalaureate. I suppose European schools and a European baccalaureate can be a solution for this. 

Let's return to the issue of recruitment. The Commission has often been accused of not opening up top positions outside of the institution when recruiting officials. Do you think it is still very much a closed circle? 

It is a very closed circle. So far, based on staff rules, it is a very closed system. It's a very rigid system. But you should never forget one thing, which is probably not so relevant in all member states, but in some member states it's very relevant: the rigidity was mostly asked for by staff unions to avoid nepotism, and to avoid favouritism – perhaps nepotism is too harsh, but favouritism – and to ensure fair career movement. 

So there are two aspects. If you make it more flexible, there is a danger than different cultures will take it differently. Five minutes ago, I was approached with a demand from last century, which was from a very high-level person and unimaginable in the modern world. It was against every kind of normal reflection on appointments. 

So it's not dead, and you should have rigid rules as well. But if you consider that you have 30,000 people, and 200 people leave the system voluntarily per year – of course, in addition to those who retire – but a few hundred people change jobs to take on other challenges, then this raises real questions. 

It is so marginal. It is a closed community. People come and stay here until retirement, and that's the problem. For instance, a certain flexible exchange between the European Commission and national administrations will be heavily disputed and discussed, relating to the external action service. There will be the question of how to accommodate people from national administrations to keep ownership by national foreign services as well in this service – so there is no solution today within our rules. 

And of course salary systems are so different in different member states and the Commission that it makes it impossible, but a certain rotation between national administrations and the European Commission would be good. 

I think, though, that more flexibility and maybe more open concours and a competition mechanism to appoint high officials will be one thing which will be discussed during the next term of this Commission: personnel policy. 

We tried to introduce more flexibility in the career development review because the situation today is absurd. We take in people aged around 25-30 – people with at least some serious work experience already – and then if they have taken all the necessary steps, they are available for the highest posts when they are over 50 or even older. 

So there must be flexibility, but how to combine flexibility with fairness – that will be the key issue. 

The Commission will probably reassess its portfolios according to big headlines and big challenges like climate change and the economy. How do you think this is going to work? Will there be 'super commissioners', and then pools of commissioners under that? 

There are two aspects. One aspect is basically related to the discussion over the treaty: should each country have its own commissioner forever, so even with 40 EU member states, there would be 40 commissioners. 

A bigger and bigger Commission is definitely more difficult to manage. That's clear. Coming from a small member state and now having known this internal kitchen for five years and the personnel policy we have, it is a great big achievement that we have ensured fair appointments. 

All our appointments are waterproof and fair. You have a situation under Nice where there will be 27 member states and 15 commissioners, and the Nice Treaty says very clearly that everybody is equal, whatever the method of selection. 

Imagine if France and Germany did not have a commissioner – because clearly, this is possible under Nice – what would happen then? There would be a politicising of director-generals, and then it would be crazy. This will be a crazy system: there will be a political leadership which has less power and less political impact than the director-generals! 

I cannot see that under this structure today. With the strong support of the president, we have resisted, we have always tried to accommodate people and find solutions to keep everybody happy. But nobody has ever been successful in exercising any pressure to appoint director-generals from certain member states. This has always been a free choice based on merit. 

But then how can the future Commission president and vice-presidents resist if Germany and France do not have a commissioner? 

I have a clear preference for having one commissioner per country. And then there is no other possibility than to have a hierarchy inside the Commission. We will basically have a hierarchy in RELEX, because we will have a vice-president who is by definition vice-president already, and it means that by definition the external action service – and its vice-president or commissioner – will be higher than other RELEX commissioners. 

So there will already be a hierarchy. And I think that some kind of hierarchy where vice-presidents really have a coordinating role over certain sectors is a necessity to be followed. Otherwise it's really difficult. Can you imagine the discussion with 40 people behind the table? 

Is this under Nice or Lisbon? 

Under Nice, the number is less. But Lisbon of course does not exclude a hierarchy inside the Commission. That's possible.

Your colleague Margot Wallström said in a recent speech that transparency and communication should go hand-in-hand. Should transparency and communication be brought together under the umbrella of openness? What would the anti-fraud and administration commissioner do then? 

The administration commissioner has an enormous workload! It wouldn't be a problem if there were to be a redistribution of tasks. The uniting idea for my transparency initiative - the Commission's transparency initiative actually - came from my commissioner hearings for this post, and the enormous suspicion that surrounds decision-making in the European Union. 

One question, which I could not understand actually, came from Mr [Jens-Peter] Bonde, the famous Eurosceptic from Denmark. He asked why the information on beneficiaries [of EU funds] could not be public, which was a surprise to me, because I thought it was public. 

And of course, then there are all the lobbying activities, and so I just decided that one of my main tasks would be to diminish the suspicion surrounding EU decision-making. 

Whoever takes these issues ahead should very clearly define what the outcome will be, and these two things have definitely reached these objectives, especially with the opening of beneficiaries. 

But it must also be clear what the concrete terms are, what the flesh is, for all the portfolios. If you have a portfolio, you will have to have discussions within the Commission, because it is of course a complicated question: how to find 27? We clearly see that some portfolios are very big and some are very small. You should probably ask the president what his observations are. 

In your view, does it make sense for communication to go hand-in-hand with transparency? 

Communication is logically aligned with transparency, so why not? I don't know how happy [Communications Commissioner Margot] Wallström is with her last five years, and I have noticed that she sometimes considers that her previous five years as environment commissioner were much more fruitful. 

Everything depends on what you can do, and what kind of projects and programmes you create for yourself. It depends. Communication is always blamed for everything. If something goes wrong, if Commissioner X proposes a stupid programme – which happens – then it will be met by criticism, and [the commissioner concerned] always blames communication: 'the programme is good but communication is bad'. Nobody is very keen to recognise that some programmes are completely crazy. 

I certainly don't think communications commissioner is a particularly easy job. 

If the communications and transparency portfolios were to go together, what would be the next steps? You said the transparency initiative was the key initiative of your last term. Will there be a new flagship policy for administration and anti-fraud this time? 

I don't have a clear answer at the moment. Basic elements have taken place though, and the code of conduct will probably be discussed at the beginning of the next Commission anyway. Integrity issues too, to make it more concrete. 

We held the 'Ethics Days' where people discussed concrete cases. They were extremely interesting. 

So you see that there are a lot of grey areas where clarity should be produced. This is one area, definitely, and of course cooperation between the EU institutions. For instance, one idea which was also in the transparency initiative at the beginning was to have some kind of body to assess conflicts of interest, and actually it was not my idea because the Commission had already proposed this in 2000. 

It's a very complicated issue, in fact. For instance, can I have dinner with my daughter, who is a competition lawyer? You can easily go to the level of absurdity, too. People who don't like to deal with these issues; they especially take this absurd line, and show how ridiculous these stupid rules about hospitality can be.

But there must be some other kind of assessment body, and the Commission proposed in 2000 that this should be inter-institutional and linked to administrative reform. Nothing has happened so far. The next Commission will definitely create a body for the Commission. This will be next and has already been decided, but wait until the new Commission has started. 

Margot Wallström has several ideas to increase openness, and I definitely support these ideas. On access to documents, there have been mixed responses and mixed reflections. 

One thing of course is that access to documents is quite large. I myself sometimes have difficulty finding the necessary documents on my screen, but this is a question of technology rather than basic principles! 

Not every document should be public. When I started on the transparency issue as minister of finance, this was also a starting point. I sometimes remind people of this. The finance ministry was considered the headquarters of all conspiracies, so the public wondered 'what are they doing now?' There were lots of different rumours, so we put everything on a website, or almost everything. And the public was extremely happy. 

I said very clearly when there were working pieces that were not transparent. A document becomes transparent when a certain version is ready. But you have to have a certain discussion piece, otherwise people are afraid to propose any new ideas for fear that they might be stupid. You don't have a creative discussion. 

Of course, everything can be misused. We should think about documents and openness of documents. 

As part of the same transparency initiative, we have opened up all our exchanges of letters. In the beginning, legally we had to ask everybody 'can I put your letter on the website?' and only do so if they accepted. 

At the beginning, there were some who didn't accept this, but now everyone accepts it. All exchanges of views, consultations and letters are open. I don't know if that's the practice everywhere or not, but probably if I were interested in discussions about environmental or pharmaceutical issues, I would be very interested. If I worked in the field I'd want to know what the different views are. 

I'd like to know the views of one side and the views of the other side, and not just read a reference to the fact that all views have been taken into account. Something can be done there, to give bigger access to decision-making. 

Back to the lobby register: how would you view the prospects for ever moving towards a common register between all three institutions? 

It's moving. In May, we made a breakthrough agreement with Parliament to have a common register. I can no longer remember the details, but there were tensions over how to describe the possible applicants, and over the information. 

But we signed an agreement in the final days of the last Parliament, and the same people are continuing into the new Parliament. Diana Wallis, a vice-president of the European Parliament, will continue at the head of this working group. 

We think that there will be concrete results with the Parliament. 

Another question is the Council. 

But the Parliament wants a mandatory scheme. Diana Wallis is going to fight for that. 

When the Parliament discussed their resolution on the transparency initiative, about mandatory and non-mandatory, they almost excluded law firms from their resolution. 

A resolution of Parliament is not a law, it's just a political declaration, and there was such a heavy fight in Parliament about the law firms. Can you imagine what would happen if we introduced a directive or something like that? 

And think-tanks? 

After a very visible and spectacular conflict with the think-tanks, some very important ones have visited me here. Some very important ones in Paris have joined the register. So a breakthrough is coming. They will be in, and public affairs consultancies have also supported us in this approach to think-tanks. They're saying 'look, what are they advertising?' 

Your support – press support – has been very instrumental in this exercise, and this will continue. I think that under pressure, think-tanks will join the register, but law firms are a more complicated issue, because legally they are very clever. 

What more can be done to build citizens' trust in the EU institutions? 

I have a heretical view on this. It goes via governments. If national governments exercise, in their country, cheap criticisms of the European Union, then no-one can overcome this. It's impossible to establish direct links from Brussels to Estonia or France, circumventing national governments. 

If national governments are very weak, then yes, but if they are strong enough, then it's very clear in all referenda – in France and the Netherlands, the populations followed clear guidance from governments. 

And national parliaments? 

For national parliaments it's the same. If national elites are exercising an anti-European attitude, then the citizens will take this attitude. If national parliaments and governments are pro-European, then citizens are pro-European as well. 

Governments take a line, but national parliaments have debates about Europe. The German Constiutional Court ruling is clear – they want national parliaments to be on the front foot. 

Yes, why not? I am very happy about this. 

Do you think it should be further encouraged? Obviously the Lisbon Treaty gives a greater role to national parliaments. 

Yes. If parliaments form positions and have debates – I have been a member of my national parliament – then this is always productive. And people follow them – of course, everyone says 'what on earth are these parliaments discussing?', but there is a clear diffusion of ideas and attitudes. 

Let's say you are a medical doctor or a plumber. You're a good plumber. People trust you because you are a good plumber. As a good plumber, you are very busy. You have a lot of work. So you have to trust other people. You trust medical doctors, you trust your government, and you trust your parliament. 

This is a very simple mechanism. I have always been ready to go to national parliaments. But it's very interesting that I've only been twice, because none have expressed any interest! 

I've been to four: the Estonian parliament, the Bundestag, the House of Lords and the parliament of the Netherlands, in committee meetings to explain issues of financial governance and things. 

I would be very happy for commissioners to have more of this kind of event. But there must be interest. I would highly appreciate regularly going to national parliaments.