EC’s Environment Directorate faces serious staff cuts
According to ENDS Europe, the Commission’s General Directorate for the Environment is scheduled to undergo major personnel cuts. At a meeting of the European Parliament ENVI Committee, MEPs, like Denmark’s Margete Auken, expressed fears that this reorganisation process may result in undermining the DG’s capacity to uphold its important work on infringements of environmental law.
“I am perfectly aware that we need to have more people and that we are understaffed, especially if I compare my current DG with the previous”, replied Environment Commissioner Janez Potočnik. “I will do my best that we will protect internally the capacity to deliver.” “I will never do anything to harm my services on the contrary”. “We have to accommodate internally in the same way we are asking externally member states and others to accommodate. And I just want, in those austerity times which are following, that we would be ready for that”, Commissioner Potočnik stated, claiming this reorganisation process to be an opportunity for modernisation.
Sources: ENDS & Cork Environmental Forum, European Parliament’s ENVI Committee Meeting of 26.02.1013.