The Reform of the European Commission: An Ethical Perspective

Abstract

This article examines how the Commission has approached the subject of organisational ethics as part of its post-1999 administrative reform. It begins by explaining the relationship between the Commission resignation and the reform that followed. It then reviews some of the relevant ethics literature, identifying a useful conceptual framework on reform and ethics. The third section introduces the reform proper, arguing that it is loosely in line with new public management thinking. The fourth section then identifies the ethical dimension of the reform package presented during the Prodi Commission, with the aim of explaining the Commission approach. The article concludes that the Commission has taken an eclectic approach to ethics, so that while the Commission's approach to ethics is very much in line with new public management ideas, it has been supplemented by compliance-based ethics management, albeit of a modest kind. This approach, it is argued, may have a detrimental impact on organisational ethics within the Commission, though the author accepts that is too early to pass judgement on this final point.