Civil servant Carmen Csernelhazi is happy to be earning far less than friends working in Hungarian businesses, despite her excellent qualifications. But few people in Central and Eastern European countries think like her, leaving government offices the haunt of less talented under-performers, incapable of the drive and professionalism needed to implement reform in their countries. What keeps Csernelhazi working for the government, in the EU relations department of the Foreign Ministry, is the prospect of becoming a diplomat somewhere in the European Union. The 27-year-old has a degree in international relations from the Budapest University of Economics and speaks five foreign languages - Arabic, English, French, German and Spanish. ''I'd like to become an EU diplomat and I think this is the road that will take me there,'' Csernelhazi says: ''I'm doing what I have always wanted to do.''
The scarcity of people like Csernelhazi worries the EU as it hurries potential members to make sweeping changes to their laws and societies to bring them up to Union standards. Countries like Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, front-runners among the 12 mainly former Communist countries negotiating EU membership, are under pressure to prove they can carry out the changes they promise in legislation. ''It is not enough to approve laws. They also have to be implemented,'' European Commission President Romano Prodi said on a trip to Warsaw: ''Poland must ensure resources are available, not only money but also people.'' That will be hard as salaries in bloated civil services lag far behind fast-growing private sector pay, hampering recruitment of the brightest and best. The kudos of working for the government was also considerably diminished by 40 years of Communist rule. ''In terms of reaching EU standards, I think we are only roughly halfway,'' says Katalin Nyiri, head of human resources at Hungary's Finance Ministry.
The EU has repeatedly criticised central and eastern European membership candidates for the poor performance of their civil services. It has urged quick reforms of public administration and decentralisation of authority. "There has to be a great deal more training of regional administrators," says Michael Lake, head of the European Commission's delegation to Hungary. ''Ministries had no previous histories of making decisions under the Communist regime. This is partly a generation problem,'' he added. The Commission in a report on accession chided the Czech Republic, which has about 160,000 people employed in the public sector, for defaulting on its commitment to implement an act on the civil service by January 1, 2001.
The Commission criticised a tendency in the Czech civil service to encourage short-term appointments, low salaries, and a lack of measures to hold staff accountable for policy implementation. In Poland, Ryszard Czarnecki, minister in charge of coordination of EU entry preparations, was forced to resign in 1998 after Brussels cancelled $ 37 million in aid funds because applications were poorly prepared. Problems are particularly worrying in ministries such as agriculture, which will have to implement huge farm and animal registration programmes and administer subsidy schemes once the former Communist states join the Western bloc. Inadequate ability to disburse hefty regional subsidies also send a shiver down the spine of EU bureaucrats. ''We need stronger institutions and better wages for law enforcement and civil servants. That way the room for corruption will decrease because civil service employees will think twice about losing a well-paying job," says Petr Kubernat, deputy head at the Czech Foreign Ministry's EU integration section.
Job security and stability are two key factors keeping workers in underpaid government jobs in the region. But most young people, holding degrees in competitive fields such as economics, law or finance, want something else - dynamism, flexibility and not least, better pay. ''In the public sector there are not many challenges, there is no pressure on you to perform and the pay is much lower than in the private sector,'' says Istvan Zsoldos, analyst at one of Hungary's leading securities firms, Concorde Securities. Zsoldos, 33, has an economics degree and more than three years' experience working at the National Bank of Hungary. ''One thing is money, but there is also a lot more feedback and flexibility in the private sector,'' he said when asked why he moved to Concorde from the central bank: ''In foreign countries it's a positive thing to have public sector experience on your CV but if you stay in the public service for long then you become lazy,'' he added.
In 1990 the Polish government set up a school under the supervision of the prime minister's office to educate a new group of highly-qualified top civil service officials. It has gone some way to producing the skills so sorely-lacking. ''It was essential to introduce an innovative, fresh and more ambitious mentality in the public sector which is saturated with the communist mentality work ethic,'' said Krzysztof Kicinski, deputy director at the School of Public Administration. Hungary, which has one of the youngest prime ministers and finance ministers in the region - both in their mid-thirties - is currently revising its public service law.
It wants to improve wages in public administration, but for 2001 the rise barely exceeds the rate of inflation.
Freitag, 27. April 2001