Kallas on the "Triple-A" tasks 

You have described yourself as the "triple A" Commissioner – for administration, audit and anti-fraud. Can you tell us what M. Barroso’s reason was for bringing together these competences?

The idea is to create more synergy and to raise the profile of audit and discharge procedures to operational level and to join together efforts to have a prudent auditing and prudent budget discharge follow-up.

In every organisation, if you change something, you always have positive and negative sides. The Parliament has criticised the fact that accounting is now separate and perhaps we should also merge accounting but so far it is our conviction that the structure should be as it is.

Another thing is that now administration, audit and OLAF are all together, so there could be some conflict of interest. But actually I do not fear that, if everything is transparent and based on clear rules.

If there were a conflict of interests, how would you handle this? 

It is very easy because in these cases, the biggest mistake you can make is to try to hide or to try to soften something. So if something happens, I would like to know first and handle it immediately and take the initiative. You as journalists know that in this contemporary world, nothing can be hidden.

So if you imagine that I should try to influence OLAF to have a less critical approach, this would not be rational. The rational thing is to have a clear picture of what is going on and to take adequate steps, not over-react, not under-react, but take adequate steps to address the problems.

Some kind of ring-fence to close the problem would be a catastrophe and I would not do it.

Concerning the internal reforms within the Commission, M. Barroso has said that he is in favour of "evolution, not revolution". Both inside the Commission and outside there are some agents of status quo and some agents of change: on which side do you stand?

I would be happier answering this question in a few months! Now, I can say that having been a member of the Commission for one month, I have a clear impression and I have seen quite a lot. I have also seen problematic things. But it is too early to say……

I think that the concept of reform is very modern and very good. And an action-based management system expects cohesion between the plans of individual workers and the officials in the Commission and the great working plan of the Commission. The most awful thing is if there is no compliance with these plans. If everybody takes this seriously and there is no violation of rules, it is very good.

There is a certain desire to simplify the procedures so that there is not too much bureaucracy. I have been told that there are ideas and we will soon propose something – how to simplify this.

Clear rules, visibility, transparency – this takes some bureaucracy because otherwise you cannot evaluate how the rules are followed. But of course you cannot have people filling in forms instead of carrying out the Lisbon agenda! So simplification might be a great priority – to abolish shortcomings and make it more client-orientated and human friendly. What kind of changes I see as necessary, it is too early to say.

Does "client-orientated" mean that you will try to make the Commission staff more open to input from the public? That would lead to more calls for reform. Or will you try to avoid re-opening debates and simply implement what has been done already?

I am never against debate. We have already discovered a lot of things in which transparency can be developed and we soon will have proposals about it. For instance, a member of Parliament has said that he wants to have a link to a list of the beneficiaries of agricultural subsidies. I didn’t understand because in Estonia this is already the case, it is on the website. If a person becomes a Minister of agriculture, the newspapers check carefully his personal links. This is open in Denmark and Estonia. 

So you will be an advocate for more transparency in the Commission?

Absolutely.

Transparency is also related to principles of responsibility. Some have criticised the Commission, saying that is it difficult to find out who is in charge of which programme. There have been efforts to make people in charge at a lower level. Is that a part of your philosophy?

Good question. I share your views. Sometimes it is difficult to know who is responsible. And sometimes I myself find it difficult to know for what I am responsible!

So we can expect some action but you don’t want to say what yet?

Yes

On the question of staff reforms: the EU is becoming de facto more federal, so should the Commission still consider itself a kind of extra territorial international organisation or should it see itself as a top layer of government in Europe? If it were so, could there be more mobility between national and European civil services - in both directions?

This is a big question – what philosophy should underpin the Commission. The Commission is a very powerful player in competition, agriculture, internal market etc. It is like a top executive in these things and governments have given powers away. As to civil service mobility………this is a different question.

In personnel issues we have a problem. We will be strong in protecting the principle that merit must go first but at the same time there is the question of geographical balance which is very sensitive for all countries. How to combine this is a real headache. There are special arrangements for new Member States, but after that, as far as mobility between civil services - national and Brussels - is concerned, it depends on the country. I know that some consider [national officials sent to the EU] as [permanent members of the national civil service] and this can be very productive. It is up to national governments. So if you think it can be the subject of some kind of directive, I don’t think so. But I strongly recommend to my own government to treat it as one component. 

It works quite well from the national to the EU level, mainly political appointees and national experts. But the reverse direction does not work at all.

I have no comment.

On the point of merit and geographical balance, you have said that you don’t like "parachutage". Do you have the power to prevent it?

We shall see. But I have the intention to do something.

The rules are clear: [people should be appointed on the basis of merit]………..The problem is political interference from Member States. They actually make terrible mistakes. [To illustrate the risk of "parachutage", the Commissioner related an anecdote about the appointment of the most able person for a high position who was damaged by newspapers in his own country saying "the post will go to one of our men" prior to his appointment.]

Citizens sometimes have the impression that the EU budget is not well managed and this seems to be confirmed by the reports of the Court of auditors. We know that much of the problem lies with Member States. How do you plan to tackle this?

There must be some change in the system. We are working with Terence Wynn [former Chairman of the European Parliament Committee on Budgets] and he has written a brochure which is very good. In the Maastricht Treaty there was one sentence put in without any discussion and nobody noticed the dangers of this sentence. It is [the sentence] that the Court of Auditors must give a declaration of assurance of reliability of the accounts and the legality and regularity of underlying transactions. But nobody actually foresaw the mechanism of how this could be done. To have such a system in commercial banking, you would have to close all the banks every year. Because they all have a million transactions, millions of clients……it would be impossible. 

Something must be done in Europe - there are different proposals. One is to have a declaration of assurance from each Member State. Nothing has happened for 10 years but I have a strong commitment that at least we must have a clear vision of what to do before the next year’s budget discharge starts. We have good co-operation with the Parliament and with the Court of Auditors.

So should the EU audit take inspiration more from commercial audits?

No, here I am not so sure. I know the debate in commercial circles and there can be a big desire to take over commercial practices. But accounting practices in the commercial world have one clear purpose: the increase of the balance sheet, increase of wealth. Public administration does not have such a purpose […………].

The principles of commercial auditing and accounting are very developed, but there are scandals every day - US securities management, accounting problems, Enron etc. So this means that commercial accounting is also far from perfect.

There are a lot of spending cuts at national level and the image of the EU is not very good. Would some symbolic action be necessary – for example: is it normal that Commissioners should earn - in net terms - several times what Prime Ministers earn? 

These things are very illusionary. You can never satisfy public opinion by tackling this kind of thing. Much more substantial is that the system is transparent and that salaries don’t have some kind of additional element. I think that public servants must earn substantial salaries. We must have fewer public servants, we must have great differentiation …..but it is imagination that if you cut the salaries of highest officials, it would be a great advantage and the public would like it. The public will never like it……….the public wants officials to work without salary at all and even then they will not be satisfied because then they will not respect them any more.

What I would like to see is a system where we can say that this is the salary and that there are no other payments: bonuses for Christmas, for vacations etc. You should have a salary and everyone knows: this is the salary and that’s it.

We must avoid Ministers and other high officials starting to use their official positions and mixing the possibilities of their office with their own private needs: this is terribly dangerous and I am against these kind of things.

You are talking about two different types of side earnings: one is corruption – and you think that high salaries are one of the measures against this. The second is official but hidden premiums given "on the side". On the second type, there have been initiatives under Vice-President Kinnock to simplify the system, for example, to suppress the "colis de Noël" under which people could get a lot of alcohol at low prices etc. But there are still very substantial elements: for example in the context of an internal labour market, is it normal that EU officials who start here at the age of 25 and will live in Brussels all their lives should still get a "prime d’expatriation" after 30 years in Belgium?

These are at least three different non-related topics. We have a policy of zero tolerance against corruption within the institutions. A simple and transparent salary system can help, but is worth achieving on its own. I have no comment at present on the expatriation allowance.

One of the problems with the culture in the staff of the Commission is that they don’t think in an integrated way – so you have policies coming from one DG that contradict the policies of another. How can you promote more horizontal thinking?

That is a big and complicated question also at national level. In my own country, when a minister is appointed and he goes to a ministry with views that are different from the machinery of the ministry, he will be in terrible trouble. If he faces different views from officials in this ministry, what can he do? And the government may have a different political profile from that of the ministry.

When I was minister of finance, you always saw terrible conflict between the ministry of finance and all the other ministries. There is always a question in my country: who is in charge - the ministry of finance or the ministry of legal affairs?

Overcoming these contradictions is a matter for ministerial level. This is sometimes too much – ministers are very busy people.

Here there is a system of cabinets which provides this kind of horizontal reflection. For example, there are great differences between services on environmental issues. Sometimes a Commissioner will hold one view and there will be a reflection [from other cabinets] saying "your ideas are too radical and cannot be implemented". This is a reflection system via cabinets which somehow works. And then there is the matter of organisation – bringing people together and talking about it. But as a machinery the system of cabinets must somehow balance these contradictions, which are normal and exist everywhere.

But here this happens only at a late stage of the process - just before the preparation of the meetings of the Commission. At an early stage, each DG develops its own ideas and the momentum can go on for years before there are efforts to bring their views together. How would you bring the different DGs to formulate more similar views earlier?

I din't see this as a major problem. There is alot of informal coordination and contact at a very early stage. This is a matter of organisation. Relevant Commissioners and directors general must bring people together at earlier stages. This is linked to one of your earlier questions about who is responsible for what and how transparent this process is.

Often now DGs are in the consulting mode before developing a proposal – and that’s a good development. Often, though, you have one consultation which, in fact, already foresees a certain policy and another which foresees a different policy. If there were inter-service consultation and internet based consultation between different DGs at the same time, could this lead to a more integrated policy from the outset?

Yes, of course. But finally the contradiction must be solved at the level of Commissioners. But I know that some questions have taken at least five years to get to the Commission. And I know that many complicated questions were decided at the end of the last Commission.

A final question: your country is one of the leading counties in e-government and in your hearings before parliament you talked about promoting e-government in the Commission. Can you tell us about any concrete proposals that you might already have?

This work was started here before I came to office. The Secretariat-General and DG DIGIT have made preparations, they have visited Estonia and seen how it works there [………] so we have progressed a little. We are in the process of appointing a Director General in DG DIGIT. According to the candidates with whom I have spoken, we could have substantial progress within a year. And DG DIGIT is also ready […]. But I am not a specialist in technology […].

At a recent Commission meeting people were still using paper – in this meeting, we had to look at 350 pages of paper [….] It is very difficult to find what the change is that is being discussed while at the same time listening to comments on the change itself. If you had all this on computer, it would be much easier. 

But [in the Commission] there are complications. The system here is much bigger than in Estonia and the security question is much more serious. Because if the system were hacked into you could clearly see the ministers’ opinions.

And there are also problems. For example, if everyone starts making changes at the same time, the system could crash and become paralysed. The question is also linked to the personal readiness of [those involved] to work with the screen. But it is much easier [with computers].