With the Minister of the Interior, Niki Kerameos, stressing that the State “wants the best to lead the key positions of the public sector” and the opposition expressing objections, the discussion and elaboration of the bill for the new framework for the Selection of Administrations began in the competent parliamentary committee of the Public Bodies and Strengthening their Efficiency.

From the beginning of her speech, Mrs. Kerameos hastened to refer to the aims of the bill, saying that its main aim is to strengthen trust and the sense of justice towards the State, to signal a change of mentality in the public administration and to “rebuild” the respectful relationship with citizens. “To be sure, all and sundry, that we respect the taxpayer’s money, we respect their need for quality service, we respect their demand for transparency and meritocracy”, underlined the responsible minister, presenting to the Committee the new Framework for the selection of Public Agency Management .

“A new, flexible and more targeted system of selection and evaluation of the Managements of Public Sector Agencies is proposed, which is part of the broader strategy of the government and the prime minister for reforming sectors in the Public Administration, with the aim of optimally utilizing our valuable human resources, of his knowledge and experience, so that we can provide better quality, more efficient services to the citizens, said Mrs. Kerameos and emphasized that it introduces a series of innovations and moves in two axes, she emphasized, noting that on the one hand, it upgrades the selection process of the administrations , on the other hand, forms a new framework for targeting and evaluation.

Regarding the selection of administrations of public bodies, he informed in detail that:

– The process now falls under the Supreme Staff Selection Council, to enhance transparency and objectivity.

– The Agencies are grouped, depending on the scope and type of their responsibilities, and the procedures are differentiated, for example, for the selection of a national agency head and a local agency agency.

• Requirements for formal qualifications are increasing. All candidates must have a university degree, very good or good, as the case may be, knowledge of a foreign language and, as the case may be, work experience relevant to their subject of interest.

• Skill testing of candidates is conducted for specific groups of operators. The suitability of the candidates for the advertised positions is thus ensured, as it is verified in a reliable and objective manner that they can respond to their duties.

• Selection procedures are streamlined. Characteristic is the fact that it is planned to issue a single notice for the 120 hospital administrators instead of 120 separate notices and 120 separate procedures. In this way human resources, working hours, time and public money are saved.

Regarding the second axis of the bill, which is based on the fixed targeting and evaluation for the new Administrations of Public Bodies, it is foreseen:

• The preparation of annual action plans for each Agency, which include action planning, innovations, qualitative and specific quantitative objectives, which will be approved by the competent minister

• The Administrations should sign a performance contract, which will state specific actions and objectives and which will be posted on the website of the supervising Ministry.

• Evaluation of Administrations on an annual basis and, depending on the achievement of the goals set, to be given the possibility of a reward – productivity bonus, while the competent minister can decide on the immediate termination of their term in case of non-achievement of the goals that have been set.

• Agency workers, heads of organizational units, to be able to submit their opinion on the performance of the head and these opinions will be taken into account by the Minister, in the context of the annual evaluation.

Finally, in her speech, the Minister of the Interior underlined that this bill sends a message inside and outside Greece that the best can be put in charge of key positions in the public sector “that we are interested in serving the citizen and not appointing the statesman, that the State can and wants to be modern, innovative, rational, fair”. “Let’s overcome parties and colors” he said and called on the country’s political system “to send a message that the State wants the best in these key positions of responsibility, that we choose to put together additional filters of meritocracy, transparency, objectivity for a better State, for a better service to the citizen”.

The opposition parties

The SYRIZA rapporteur, Rallia Christidou, accused the government of empty promises “about the alleged de-partisanization” of the Public Administration and observed that the issue of the selection of administrations is part of the general problem of the dominance of the hypertrophic political system at the expense of the weak administrative system.

He accused the ND government that from 2019 onwards it promoted the abolition of the system of law 4369/2016 as well as the establishment of official secretaries, while the following year, he brought to the Parliament and voted law 4735/2020, which it currently replaces “which constitutes the purest admission of failure.”

He argued that this is a general bill, without clear timetables and objectives, which simply complicates the existing bureaucracy at the highest levels of the hierarchy in the public administration, while its purpose is for the prime minister’s circle to control the administrations, and therefore the performance, of the main public sector organizations.

In summary, he referred to “basic failures and shortcomings of an otherwise multiproblematic bill”, which – as he said – sets minimum required qualifications to become an administrator, establishes Evaluation Committees with a clear governmental majority, establishes problematic scoring, while the transitional provisions they are preferential in favor of their holders.

The special buyer of PASOK – KINAL, Panagiotis Doudonis, argued that the bill works “like a fig leaf for customerism” and in addition it also works as a “proceduralization of the choice of mothers”. “This is about legitimizing the client state with procedural false guarantees. And we have no inclination and political will to legitimize such a mentality, let alone to consent to its concealment through procedures that claim to be objective but are deeply favoritism,” he said. He also referred to the previous term of the government and claimed that he only has steps backwards to show since the choices of hospital administrators, which were finally made, did not correspond to the declarations that no MPs who failed to be elected will be placed in the National Social Security System and that efforts will be made to return the young people in our country who left due to brain drain. Finally, Mr. Doudonis said that PASOK, as the “custodian and authentic supporter of the country’s modernization effort”, will not accept the christening of clientelism as “modernization”, because such a thing also offends common sense.

On behalf of the KKE, the special buyer, Konstantinos – Vasilios Metaxas, focused his criticism on what policy the administrators will implement and pointed out that the government, with the bill under discussion, is attempting to adapt the institutional framework that governs the system of selecting administrations of the public sector bodies in an even more reactionary direction.

“It seeks to put the administrations in front with a more active role in order to speed up the implementation of its anti-popular policy with both the carrot and the whip, but this is also a development that should concern workers in the public sector in particular,” said Mr. Metaxas and brought as an example the possibility provided for the dismissal of those administrations that do not reach the goals.

“The bill may seem to seek to enshrine both evaluation and meritocracy, but it has those safety nets where in fact the best of the government can be chosen in the end. And that is why this possibility of final selection is given by the respective minister, but of course this is ensured by the formation of the committees as well as by the exams and the interview. In no case does the provision for written exams guarantee the invariance of these exams, just as the interview is purely subjective for those who take the interview and evaluate it” underlined, among others, the expert buyer of Hellenic Solution, Pavlos Sarakis.

From the “Spartians”, the special buyer Ioannis Kontis, said that this is a bill, which if we put the right foundation, is something that the Greeks generally want, as the appointments of “mothers” must be stopped, he applauded its principle this framework and was reserved for more details in the next meetings of the committees.

G. Apostolakis, special buyer of “Niki” stated that the bill being passed replaces the failed regulations of the previous law and argued that although it abolishes direct government appointments and establishes stages in the selection process, but the government still dominates , since in the committee for the selection of the three leading candidates, the majority will be the government officials and the minority will be the independent authorities.

From “Pleusi Eleftherias”, Eleni Karageorgopoulou, a special buyer, said that while her party would like to see the bill positively, it ultimately treats it with concern and caution, because the actions of the government have proven that objectivity, transparency , impartiality and meritocracy, have not been observed. After making observations and expressing concerns about specific articles, he reserved his position in detail at the next meetings.

Answer by Kerameos

Mrs. Kerameos, addressing the Opposition and commenting on her attitude towards the bill, observed that until now the parties do not seem to have taken a clear position, except for SYRIZA “who” – as she said – “yesterday criticized the fact that the heads of these bodies they are chosen at the end by the minister”.

“Why should the minister choose?”, he said to the SYRIZA rapporteur and replied: “You are not saying that the minister chooses from those who have already successfully passed the strict on-off criteria, the skills test, the entire ASEP process. You do not say that the minister has the political responsibility of the specific body and will be asked to cooperate very closely with it. Above all, however, you do not say that with your own law, the SYRIZA law, the minister was to choose the head from three times the number of candidates. And what you’re also not saying is that your new leader wants hospital governors to be elected by the staff, so they should be unionists.’