Appointment of senior officials in the European Union: theory, law and practice: case study of Martin Selmayr's appointment ae the Secretary General of the European Commission

Abstract

Since its creation, the European Union grew to become a sui generis entity often compared to international organizations and federal states. For over 68 years the Europeanization idea grew through the integration process and the whole European “structure” kept introducing new institutions through its primary law: the European treaties. It is important to understand that the European Union runs as any other state its own administrative levels of public administration. Thus, the study of the European administrative framework, compared to the legal aspects of the European public administration, is very popular among others these days. In this context, we would like to focus our research on the legal administrative framework and its procedures regarding the appointment of senior officials in the European Union. We would like to focus on this aspect, as the European Union is often criticized about democratic deficit and non-transparent methods of decision-making. We would like to have a research on this topic to examine the internal methods of the European institutions of appointing unelected officials to carry out the European mission. Furthermore, we will examine the case of the “fast-track promotion” of Martin Selmayr as Secretary General of the European Commission, the highest post in the European civil service, as it grew to be a scandal regarding his previous position as chief of staff to President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Junker. As explained before, the importance of my thesis is to examine the European Union’s methods of appointing senior officials and whether these practices comply with the legal framework of the Union and occur in respective and transparent practices. Our research method will be mostly information collection and analysis from articles, books, legal texts and online sources, and we will try to conduct our research in order to present the data collected in the most suitable manner to examine the concerns of this thesis. This thesis is part of the post-graduate program in International Public Administration of the University of Macedonia.