3.3.2. The drivers for change in the European Commission

“Dealing with complexity” are the key words in this context. As the key institution at the core of policy making on the European level, the Commission is subject to a multitude of changes stemming from a variety of different actors. By using the PLETS model for drivers of change, the following factors can be distinguished:

Political factors play an extremely important role for the European Commission. This is very complex as there is not one policy agenda prepared by one actor, but a variety of different influences and policy agendas which have to be taken into account. With a system in the EU where power is less clearly defined than in national political systems and where more actors compete with each other, political change stems from various political agendas:²⁴

• the institutional agendas of the other core European institutions, such as the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers;
• policy agendas pursued by several Member States with common interests or by a national Member State (for instance highly indebted Member States, such as Greece and Spain have other policy priorities than traditional net payers such as Germany).
• thematic agendas pursued by numerous well established interest groups or movements across Europe, such as the environmental pressure groups, the industrial lobby, farmers or multinational corporations.
• political pressure coming from society at large and public opinion such as ongoing concerns about unemployment or the need to control crime;
• global policy agendas such as climate change (this for instance prompted the establishment of a separate Directorate General for Climate Change – DG CLIM) and international crisis which require a response at European level (for instance the financial crisis in Greece which led to a rise in importance and new tasks for the Directorate General for Economic and Financial Issues – DG ECFIN).

Legal factors:

Reflecting its role as the Guardian of the Treaties, legal factors are also important drivers for change which strongly influence the work of the European Commission. In this context, pressure comes from several sources, such as:

• Treaty obligations;
• Pressures to harmonize national laws and policies so as to avoid economic and social variation among the Member States and to remove obstacles to free trade;
• Requirements of international law – many EU laws and policies have been responses to international obligations and the requirements of international treaties that the EU has signed.

Economic factors

have always been at the core of change in the European Commission but the recent financial and political crisis has more than exacerbated this factor for change. As will be argued in more detail, the current context will bring deeper and more radical change to the European Commission than ever before, so that it deserves a separate subchapter.

Technological factors completely change the way we work together, although this has not yet been fully applied in the Commission. It may lead to an explosion of the channels of communication internally but also towards external actors and citizens (use of face book, twitter, blogs; establishment of social networks), it changes the ways of dealing with knowledge and expertise, and on a deeper level it may change the way of thinking about hierarchies as information is less and less linked to expert positions or to a post at a certain level of hierarchy.

Social factors such as the age composition of Commission permanent staff play a key role. Many retirements will occur in the next years, in particular from middle and senior management. At the same time the retirement age will most likely be extended by several years. Several questions arise: How to reconcile the fact that people have to work longer years with the concept of a civil service? The Commission will need to think about new working concepts, such as more flexible working patterns and how to provide interesting work profiles which can capture knowledge.

Internal drivers for change: Change often also comes from internal sources, in particular from the arrival of a new Commission with new Commissioners, where thematic portfolios are newly distributed or the arrival of a new Director General who wishes to shape his service according to his policy vision. Since each Commission has a mandate for five years, and Director Generals as top civil servants are subject to mobility after five years, this type of change happens very regularly and is among the most frequent triggers for change. It often coincides with thematic change in different Directorate Generals as they analyze external trends affecting their sector or seek ways to improve efficiency of their work.

The key point to make is that the European Commission like any other international actor or any corporation is subject to many drivers for change. However, due to its sheer size and the complexity of its environment, I argue that some drivers, such as political factors and legal factors are much more strongly pronounced than in the corporate world. Also, in the current context which puts an extremely strong emphasis on economic and financial factors, change with far reaching consequences for the institutions goes deeper than ever before.

²⁴ See McCormick, John: The European Union “Po litics and Policies”, 4 th Edition, pp. 248