The European Union’s Agency for Network and Information Security (Enisa) has moved one-third of its staff of 60 from Crete to Athens, in what amounts to an admission that locating the agency on a Mediterranean island impeded the agency’s effectiveness.

The agency’s leadership is hoping that putting staff in Athens will make dealings with the member states less cumbersome and make it easier to attract qualified personnel.

The agency’s remote location has been a serious problem since it was launched in 2005 because its main function is to advise national authorities and EU institutions on network and information security and to co-ordinate contacts between the member states, EU institutions and businesses. “We were looking for ways to be more present with the member states,” a spokesman for the agency said. Enisa has also struggled to attract staff because Crete offers limited schooling options for children of employees and few job opportunities for spouses or partners.

The move to Athens forestalls more drastic measures – including moving the entire agency to Brussels – that had been raised by MEPs in their negotiations with member states on a new mandate for the agency. The member states sought to protect their prerogative to decide where agencies should have their seat, with individual governments worried about protecting the agencies that they currently host. The negotiations led to a deal last month under which Enisa’s headquarters, including its administration and support functions, will remain in Heraklion.

Subject to approval

The European Parliament is scheduled to approve the deal in plenary on 16 April, followed by the Council of Ministers. Member states’ ambassadors to the EU endorsed it on 1 February, and MEPs on the committee on industry, research and energy on 20 February, with 48 votes in favour, two against, and no abstentions.

Because the move of Enisa staff to Athens is an operational decision that does not require a change in its mandate, it fell under the authority of Udo Helmbrecht, the agency’s executive director. But it became politically possible only once the deal on the agency’s mandate began taking shape. Helmbrecht acted “with the knowledge and support” of the member states’ representatives on the management board, the spokesman said. “Enisa is still very much on Crete.”

The European Commission proposed changes to the agency’s mandate in 2010, prompting MEPs to demand its relocation. Giles Chichester, a centre-right British MEP who drafted the committee’s report on Enisa, had proposed moving the agency to Brussels while other MEPs wanted it moved to Athens. Many Greek MEPs had been resisting any relocation, but a majority of them now appears to support the deal to split the agency into an operational branch in Athens and an administrative branch in Heraklion because it allows Enisa to remain in Greece. The country hosts another EU agency, the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training, in Thessaloniki.

Enisa has had a small liaison office in Athens since October 2009 but has now moved to larger offices in the capital. At the formal opening on Friday (1 March), Nikos Mourkogiannis, Greece’s representative on the agency’s management board, was blunt in describing what was at stake: “I am confident that the opening of its office in Athens secures Enisa in Greece.”

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In a further sign that there are serious doubts about Enisa’s effectiveness, the deal also limits its mandate to seven years. Enisa is alone among the EU’s 32 decentralised agencies in not having an indefinite mandate. The Commission proposed in December that all agencies should have time-limited mandates on the basis of a common approach agreed with the member states and the Parliament.