Commission defence case due over sacking of whistleblower

Date: 09/10/2003

By David Cronin

THE European Commission is due to make its first formal response next week to a legal challenge mounted by whistleblower Marta Andreasen against her dismissal as the institution's accounting officer.

Andreasen, who was sacked last year after publicly voicing concerns that the Commission's book-keeping system was "vulnerable to fraud", is taking two cases to the European Court of Justice.

In them, she has asked the Luxembourg-based court to strike down her dismissal as accounting officer and a subsequent decision to suspend her from the Commission.

Originally, the Commission was asked by the Court to submit its defence by 1 September. However, it has since been given extensions (due to Commission staff shortages in August) up to next Monday (13 October) for one case and 24 October for the other.

Meanwhile, no decision has been taken on whether Andreasen should face a further investigative probe.

Tom Cranfield, the high-ranking EU official who was appointed as a hearing officer in an initial disciplinary investigation against her, told this newspaper that he submitted his report on the case to Internal Reform Commissioner Neil Kinnock almost six months ago.

Cranfield declined to comment on the contents of the report; his remit was to assess allegations that Andreasen had broken the staff regulations governing the EU civil service by giving information to other Union institutions without the permission of the Commission's hierarchy.

There has been speculation among Brussels insiders that the Commission is reluctant to take a final decision in the current political climate because it does not wish to trigger a fresh controversy over Andreasen at a time when there is already huge anxiety about the fraud scandal at Eurostat.

But one official involved in the saga said: "This is a complex case. It is quite normal that disciplinary procedures can take a considerable length of time."

While the staff regulations state that a disciplinary proceeding involving an official suspended on half or no pay must be completed within four months, this provision does not apply to Andreasen as she is still being paid her full €125,000 Commission salary.

Officials say the two most likely scenarios are that she would be given a "light sanction" - in effect a rebuke from the Commission, while being allowed to remain on its payroll - or that a disciplinary board would be set up to probe her case further.