There are signs of a change in the administrative culture in the corridors of the EU Commission. The EU Commissioner Piotr Serafin, who is responsible for the EU budget and administration, proposed changing the way the Commission offices work at a staff meeting. The draft reform is the result of a nine-month investigation in which around 150 officials took part. According to Follow the Money magazine, the paper leaked by the Contexte portal is already causing unrest before its official publication.
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The authors, who according to insiders are high-ranking Commission officials with deep insights into the institution’s operations, are calling for a kind of Brussels “perestroika”. They pay particular attention to access to documents and freedom of information requirements in the EU. They describe the current procedure for accessing files as extremely burdensome. Outdated concepts, inconsistent document filing processes, a supposedly drastic increase in inquiries and high costs due to the manual blacking out of sensitive passages put the apparatus under pressure.
To address these issues, experts suggest clearer guidelines, more modern tools and stronger operational support in processing applications, according to the report. They also advocate better practices in archiving and record keeping. This point can be understood as a quiet criticism of the management level. The Commission’s handling of transparency has repeatedly been criticized, especially in connection with missing chat messages from Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Closed space for policy making
Organizational corrections in digitization and archiving are likely to meet with general approval. Other sections of the document, however, contain questionable approaches. The authors claim that the number of requests for access to files is continually increasing. This assumption contradicts the Commission’s own annual reports, which show that requests have been declining in recent years.
Based on their dubious thesis, the authors argue that transparency requirements make it difficult to maintain a protected space for internal policy development. This is necessary to promote experiments and responsible risk-taking.
Experts view these considerations with skepticism. The EU’s existing legal framework already allows for the refusal to release documents if doing so would seriously affect internal decision-making. European courts have repeatedly confirmed this right to undisturbed thinking space for authorities. In addition, von der Leyen only tightened the rules for finding and providing documents at the end of 2024, at the beginning of her second term in office.
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The recommendations are the start of a larger debate. A high-level group of experts led by Catherine Day, a former secretary-general of the Commission, is due to give its opinion on the proposals in October. On this basis, Commissioner Serafin will ultimately prepare a formal report, which must be voted on by the entire Commission. It remains to be seen whether the announced restructuring will actually bring more efficiency or whether it will further restrict the EU authorities’ willingness to provide information, which has already been criticized. Meanwhile, there are protests against the planned gutting of freedom of information in Germany.
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