European Commission set to launch restructure within months
BRUSSELS — Plans to overhaul the EU’s executive arm will be brought forward by the start of next year at the latest, leaked documents reveal, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pushing for a restructure to make its labyrinthine civil service more efficient and cost-effective.
According to a document seen by POLITICO, the bloc’s budget and public administration chief Piotr Serafin has been tasked with “a large-scale review of the Commission’s organisation and operations, together with an external benchmarking exercise.”
The intention is to deliver a “modern, efficient public administration to deliver on our political priorities,” while also being able to handle “volatility as the new normal” and reduce both complexity “and, where possible, costs.”
Two Commission officials, granted anonymity to speak about the sensitive process, said that alternative models were being considered whereby departments could be merged.
By the end of 2026, the EU executive will move to eliminate “unnecessary processes” and encourage “more collaborative working,” having carried out a thorough assessment of “who does what.” An external high-level group will be convened this autumn to provide advice on the process, with the launch of the formal review slated for the end of 2025 or start of 2026.
In a statement to POLITICO, a spokesperson for the Commission confirmed that the high-level external group would be comprised of between seven and nine advisors “drawn from mainly from the public (or semi-public) sphere or academia in fields relevant to the review such as digitalisation, organisational culture and civil service reform. Highly qualified experts from other organisations including the private sector may also be brought in as ‘invited experts.’”
The final set of recommendations, the spokesperson said, would be in place by the end of next year.
The Commission, which is responsible for the delivery of most of the bloc’s day-to-day administrative functions, employs around 32,000 people working on every aspect of the bureaucracy.
Since taking office in 2019, von der Leyen has sought to streamline the flow of decision-making, centralizing control in her Berlaymont headquarters to ensure the EU can react more rapidly to events and crises like Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Serafin was initially asked to undertake the review when first appointed to the role at the beginning of the new mandate last year. A former Commission secretary general, Irish official Catherine Day, has been appointed as a special advisor to help oversee the process.
In recent years the complexity of the Commission has grown, with responsibility for developing and delivering on key policies falling between traditional directorates-general and the central secretariat-general under the control of von der Leyen herself.
This article has been updated to include a response from the European Commission clarifying the full timeline for the review.