A Case for Re-engineering the European Union

Re-engineering applied to business or commercial processes has yielded interesting results. In this paper an attempt is made to transfer the knowledge and experience thus acquired to complex, unclear and controversial organizations like the Europe an Union. The opportunity is taken of the 1996 Intergovernmental Conference to test the feasibility of putting forward a restructuring of the EU so that the inputs, processes and functions it undertakes are geared to predefined objectives and outputs. The first part of this article reviews the position of Europe as an entity; the latter part attempts to show one possible approach to re-engineering it. Subject to certain provisos of a political nature and after an attempt to analyze what is possible, it is concluded that the EU is a suitable case for re-engineering and there is no reason why it should not benefit from it. Based on this analysis, it is also suggested that the re-engineering approach may be transferable to other extensive or complex organiza tions.