Verheugen: "Commissioners' main political task is controlling officials"[fr][de] 

In an interview  with the German daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, Verheugen said that, over the years, the power of high-rank officials had grown so much that "sometimes control over the institution gets lost". He said that commissioners had to "watch out like hawks for the important decisions to be taken in their weekly meeting and not by officials amongst themselves". 

The Enterprise and Industry commissioner said that "underneath the surface" there was "a constant turf battle between commissioners and high-level officials". "My thesis is," Verheugen said, "that too much is being decided by officials." He added that he was appalled by reading certain letters that Commission officials had written to member states and which were "technical, arrogant and condescending". 

In the recent interview, Verheugen repeated and radicalised the criticism of the Commission's internal workings that he had already articulated in an August 2005 interview with EurActiv, when he said: "It’s still a problem to convince our services that we have a new spirit and a new approach, that we don’t want the typical reaction, ‘There is something coming from another DG? We are against. Don’t infringe on our area.’ You know - the normal turf battle. My view is that even for an international organisation the commission spends too much time and energy on internal co-ordination."

In the Süddeutsche interview, Verheugen said that many officials' attitude was that "the commissioner will be gone again after five years, so he is only a temporary squatter, whereas I myself will stay here". He added that it was "not about gaining back politial control, but about a new political culture within the Commission", including financial autonomy to be transferred from directors-general to commissioners, and the right for commissioners to replace high-level officials.