The November paper argues that "the Commission is in desperate need of reform".
"Scrapping twelve of the existing directorate generals could be done without any noticeable removal of services to the public" as "too many […] simply duplicate what is being done by EU member states" or "do jobs that are unnecessary", believes Singleton.
He calls for the Commission to focus most "on those tasks where it can deliver real benefits to Europeans", including trade, competition, consumer protection, energy and the environment, which he insists still leaves it with "huge amounts" of work to do.
Singleton suggests closing twelve DGs, namely agriculture and rural development, economic and financial affairs, education and culture, enterprise and industry, fisheries and maritime affairs, information society and media, regional policy, research, communication, development, humanitarian aid and EuropeAid, offering analyses of how the EU would manage without each one.
Moreover, he calls for the Joint Research Centre, the translation service and the informatics service to be privatised, and the Committee of the Regions to be scrapped altogether.
Singleton says that the twelve DGs he proposes abolishing "gobble up hundreds of millions of European taxpayers' money without providing any meaningful benefit to the public". Scrapping them would free up money for the Commission's trade, environment and competition activities and give member states scope to cut taxes, he adds.
He concludes that in a competitive global economy, "we cannot afford the overhead of thousands of unnecessary bureaucrats in Brussels", describing them as "a burden on economic success and future prosperity".
