Demand for clarification on final bill for premises

Date: 13/02/1997

By Rory Watson

UNION governments will be challenged next week to confirm that EU taxpayers will not be asked to foot any unexpected bills when member states finally take possession of their Council of Ministers headquarters shortly after Easter.

Although the pink granite clad Justus Lipsius building officially opened for business in May 1995, construction work on the interior is set to run well into next year.

“When we moved into the building, in reality it was a box. The exterior seemed to be completed, but in effect the inside was unfinished. There were design, technical and functional faults,” said one Justus Lipsius occupant.

The Council has now almost finished paying for its new headquarters. At the start of the year, only 4 million ecu of the total 340-million-ecu bill was outstanding, with the Belgian authorities shelling out an extra 2.7 million ecu above the contractual ceiling.

With the Council now set to replace the Belgian state as owner of the premises on 10 April, critics are complaining that future responsibility for the cost of uncompleted work is unclear.

“If we do not clarify that and everything is taken over, it could ultimately be the European taxpayer who will have to pay for it,” explained one.

The fault lies partly in the complex way the construction contract was drafted.

“It is not the clearest contract. To get anything done you have to go through the Belgian state and if the people paying for the work cannot deal directly with the constructors, then it is difficult to control the whole process,” explained one official.

Italian Socialist MEP Fiorella Ghilardotti will press EU governments next week to clarify the future arrangements. She has specifically asked them to confirm whether, in the interests of the Union's budget, they have identified “where the responsibilities lie between the different actors who have participated in the many stages of the conception and construction of the building”.

EU diplomats insist that a new contract is currently being drawn up to settle any outstanding issues. Repairs to work which is shoddy or does not conform to technical specifications would still remain the responsibility of the Belgian state.

On the other hand, faults due to bad design would need to be put right by the Council.

“Any new contract should certainly be clearer than the existing one. But is it right that member states, in a time of budgetary stringency, should pay twice for the same work - once when it is first done and then again when it has to be put right?” asked one official.