Putting myths to the test

Is the European Commission populated predominantly by lawyers who have become zealous federalist technocrats?

The European Commission is surrounded by myth. In the public mind, media coverage, and much of the academic literature, certain wisdoms about the Commission and especially its personnel have become entrenched and widely accepted. According to these conceptions, the Commission is populated by career bureaucrats, zealous Eurocrats, who want only to expand EU competencies and, therefore, their own power. Typically lawyers, they are federalist by conviction and technocratic in outlook.

Such myths were one of the starting points for a research project, recently completed by a multinational team of researchers based in Europe and the US. Funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council, EU Consent and a private donation, the project sought answers to a series of questions that have rarely been addressed in the academic literature: What are the backgrounds of the people who work for the Commission? What do Commission officials believe? What led them to pursue a career in the Commission?

The project also investigated how officials view the internal operation of the Commission, as well as their attitudes to the impact of reforms of the Commission in 1999-2004, and to the effects of the 2004 and 2007 enlargements on the organisation.

At its heart were an attitudinal survey, completed by a representative sample of nearly 2,000 officials from policy departments (directorates-general), and more than 200 interviews with commissioners, members of their private offices, and administrators, including middle and senior managers. Though the project was supported by the Commission, the research team enjoyed full academic independence.

The findings refute or challenge many of the most widely held myths about the organisation.

First, the Commission’s workforce is more diverse than is often assumed. It is not dominated by lawyers. In fact, a larger number of officials have studied economics – or, indeed, natural science – than law. Nor are Commission officials overwhelmingly recruited from the public sector. Over the past four decades, more than one-third of the Commission’s staff have come from a business background. Moreover, contrary to the view that its officials have little post-university experience beyond Brussels, more than 90% had worked elsewhere before joining the Commission.

Second, Commission officials are not universally federalist. A majority joined the Commission in order to ‘build Europe’, but competitive remuneration and, to a lesser extent, commitment to particular policy areas have become more important over time. Moreover, officials harbour quite different preferences about the kind of Europe that they favour and about the role of the Commission. Most support a traditional conception of the Commission as policy initiator and guardian of the treaties. About 36% are federalists, while 12% believe that the member states should be the central pillars of the Union.

Balance of power

Asked where power resides (relative to national governments) and where it should reside in a dozen policy areas, officials desired a modest expansion of EU responsibilities in general, but these preferences varied across sectors. One finding that stood out was that, overall, respondents thought that the EU should have less power in agriculture.

On institutional questions, the Commission’s current president, José Manuel Barroso, was rated highly (rated against the last four Commission presidents, he came second behind Jacques Delors, president from 1985 to 1995). Officials also said they believed Barroso had strengthened the presidency. Officials registered a degree of ambivalence about this development, as they also did about the strengthening of the Commission’s secretariat-general – another development confirmed by respondents. In interviews, commissioners, cabinet officials and managers expressed concern about the ‘perils of presidentialism’, including the threat posed to collegiality.

Managers feared that, in becoming more a service of the president, the secretariat-general had lost its traditional vocation, to the detriment of the organisation.

Attitudes to challenges to the organisation were more differentiated than anticipated. Officials were divided on the merits of administrative reform, though overall views were negative. On enlargement, respondents to the questionnaire expressed concern that the Commission had become a more difficult organisation to manage, but interviewees were full of praise for their talented, enthusiastic and highly motivated colleagues recruited from the ‘new’ member states.

Finally, it is worth reflecting on how the project was carried out. Allowing an outside team of researchers to solicit the views of its employees is courageous for any organisation. For a body continually under the spotlight, it was especially brave. For the research team, official backing made it possible to secure a higher response rate than was otherwise likely. For the Commission, endorsement ensured that the views of a more representative sample were heard than is the case with the usual hit-and-miss approach to which, in the absence of co-operation, researchers are usually forced to resort.

A monograph presenting the findings from the project – “The European Commission of the 21st century” (by Hussein Kassim, John Peterson, Michael Bauer, Sara Connolly, Renaud Dehousse, Liesbet Hooghe and Andrew Thompson) – will be published by Oxford University Press in the summer.

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