Ich habe eine Reihe von Fragen an die Europäische Kommission zu den Arbeitsbedingungen und der Arbeitsweise in der Generaldirektion für Wirtschaft und Finanzen gestellt:
Dear madams and sirs,
After having received several complaints about working conditions and methodologies used at the DG ECFIN I am sending you a list of questions in this regard. The responsibility and importance of the DG are reason for particular concern. This is why I am looking forward to your responses with great interest.
Best regards,
Sven Giegold
Green coordinator in the ECON committee
Written questions to the European Commission – MEP Sven Giegold
- Has the staff turnover in ECFIN been higher over the period 2009-2012 than over 2005-2008?
- How many members of country desk staff left the ECFIN between 2005 an 2012- Please, specify for each year.
- Does the Commission think that the level of pay in ECFIN matches with remuneration, workload and responsibility in comparable institutions?
- How many members of staff with at least administrator level in DG EcFin are women, how many are men? Please, specify additionally for each country desk.
- Could the Commission indicate what was the rank of ECFIN among all Commission DGs in staff work satisfaction surveys in 2000? in 2004? in 2008? in 2012?
- What is the share of temporary agent recruitments in DG ECFIN over the period 2009 – 2012? over the period 2005 – 2008?
- How many working days does the staff have to draft the Staff Working Paper and the Country-specific recommendations as part of the Semester? (Number of days on average between the publication of the National reform programme and the Stability and Convergence programme on the one hand, and the final deadline for ECFIN staff to produce the Working Paper on the other hand.)
- No Country Focus has been published this year by ECFIN, whereas there were 20 per year in 2004-2005. Has ECFIN stopped producing country-specific analysis aside from administrative and procedurally necessary documents published as part of the Semester?
- Over the period 2009 – 2012, in forecasting exercises, how often have growth and deficit in Member States projected for the current year and the year after (during the Spring Forecast) and for year after (Autumn Forecast) deviated by at least 0.2 pp of GDP? For which Member States and when?
- How many Seconded National Experts were / have been involved in the forecasting exercises published since 2009, working on their own country? On which countries and when? Are there internal rules to prevent conflicts of interest? Could the Commission indicate what these rules are?
- Among country desk officers working in directorates F, G and H, what is the proportion of country desks with at least a Master’s degree in economics, at least two years of seniority in their current position, and fluently speaking the language of the country they are monitoring? What is this proportion in particular on Spain and Italy?
- What is the proportion of administrators with at least a Master’s degree in economics in unit D1 of the Secretariat General (in charge of coordinating EU2020 recommendations)?
- What is the methodology used to assess structural deficits in Member States? What have been the changes introduced since 2009? What was the impact of those changes in the assessment of the structural deficit in each Member State?
- Regarding the external assumptions – which are the main input into the forecast process – has DG ECFIN ever compared their forecast for ex-EU trade and for GDP growth for the US, Japan and China with those presented at the same time by the IMF and the OECD?
- Which macro models does the Commission use in its forecasts for the EU-27, the Eurozone and the single member states? If any: Are the models consistent with each other?
- Why do some country desks use models in their forecasting and others do not?
- Six pack and two-pack (under negotiation) require member states to ensure certain economic monitoring functions to be at least partially independent from policy making. Does the Commission support to separate economic forecasting functions from policy recommendations? Does the Commission support to entrust an independent body with the forecasting function?