EC and UNESCO face scrutiny

Europe Business Review, Oct-Dec, 1999 by John Shaw

Two Europe-based bureaucracies of special interest to Australia are facing reform - maybe.

They are the European Commission (EC),the bureaucracy of the European Union, based in Brussels, and the UN Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organisation (UNESCO), based in Paris.

The EC is the featherbed that produced butter mountains and wine lakes and lots of cushy jobs for failed politicians and their friends.

UNESCO, which has done little for education, culture or science, is a haven for mediocre people with good connections.

Now Neil Kinnock, 57, the former leader of the British Labour Party who lost the "unlosable" election against John Major in 1992 and was given a soft landing in Brussels in 1994 as EC Commissioner for Transport, has been given the job of reforming the EC.

Australian politicians, farmers and exporters who regularly deal with the EC believe it is long overdue for reform.

Early this year, all of its 20 commissioners resigned amid claims of nepotism, waste, fraud and corruption concerning several senior members.

UNESCO, where a minor Spanish academic Dr Federico Mayor Zaragoza is finishing a ten-year term, is also overdue for reform and an energetic Australian offered to do it.

Gareth Evans, 55, lawyer, Oxford scholar and Australian Cabinet Minister for 13 years, is efficient, does not suffer fools gladly and is hard-working. These sterling qualities meant he had little hope of winning the job and applying new brooms and fresh breezes to its cosy court in Paris.

Australia produces many accomplished experts and administrators but none has won the top job in a UN agency.

Such posts usually go to the major powers - or to small countries whose votes the big nations need on other issues and who have political favourites in need of well-paid off-shore positions.

Australia spent several million dollars on lobbying in 1995 in a failed bid to win the top job at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), a Rome-based UN body riddled with nepotism and incompetence.

Australia spent about $250,000 to help the campaign of Mr Evans, who left Parliament recently after 21 years as a Labour MP and eight years as Foreign Affairs Minister. He brokered the peace agreement in Cambodia.

At UNESCO, Dr Mayor inherited a policy and financial mess so bad that UK, US and Singapore withdrew from membership. Dr Mayor has made some improvements, but Evans said that much more must be done to make UNESCO useful.

The other leading candidates were from Japan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia which have no reputation for reform and a strong record of conservative bureaucracy.

In his "job application" presented to the 58-member UNESCO executive board, Evans said the organisation should focus more on outcomes than events, spend more on programmes and less on headquarters administration, and be a stronger advocate for developing countries in the world's funding agencies.

He left unsaid, but strongly suggested, that none of this is happening at UNESCO.

Mr Kinnock achieved nothing notable as EC Transport Commissioner, but is speaking sternly about reforming some of the scandalous habits and expense accounts of many of his Brussels colleagues and their staffs.

He is being prodded by the new EC President, Professor Romano Prodi, the man who reformed the Italian finance bureaucracy long enough to qualify Italy to join the single EU currency the euro.

If Prodi and Kinnock have their way in Brussels, EC chiefs will, for example, no longer be able to employ their personal dentists in lucrative non-dental "consultancies".

It was such bizarre behaviour by Edith Cresson, a former Prime Minister of France who abused her job as Commissioner for Research, which brought the Commission crashing down.

Some senior EC people will welcome attempts at reform. The former EC Vice-President, Sir Leon Brittan of Britain, known for diligence and rectitude, could be asked to advise on the Prodi-Kinnock house-cleaning.