New boss takes on challenge of EU food safety

Date: 13/03/1997

By Michael Mann

THE senior civil servant who will take charge of food safety at the start of April acknowledged this week that his key task would be to demonstrate that the scientific committees charged with advising the European Commission are truly independent.

Horst Reichenbach, newly appointed director-general of the European Commission's revamped Directorate-General for consumer policy (DGXXIV), said: “Now that scientific advice will be one of the major activities of DGXXIV, my role will clearly be to show to everyone, the Parliament, the public and so on, that independent experts are as independent as possible.”

He added: “Genuine differences will appear. Commercial and agricultural interests will no longer be influencing control and scientific advice, which is very, very important.”

Aware of the historical dominance of the Directorate-General for agriculture (DGVI) within the Commission, Reichenbach promises to be firm in defence of consumer interests. There is no doubt he will be working for a “courageous boss”, in the form of Consumer Affairs Commissioner Emma Bonino.

“I cannot be completely confident that new health risks will not come up. What I can promise is that I will do all I can to protect the European consumer,” he declared during an interview with European Voice.

But he insisted that, despite criticism that it has stuck too closely to scientific advice, the Commission would continue to base its recommendations on the latest data available. He rejected fears that leaving the Standing Veterinary Committee under the auspices of DGVI would simply result in scientific advice being ignored for political reasons.

“It would be hard for them to justify themselves to the public if they were going against scientific advice put forward in the most up-to-date and transparent way,” he said.

Reichenbach also insists that extra funding is vital to ensure the success of his new department, saying MEPs' willingness to free-up additional resources will be “the acid test of the Parliament's own determination to improve matters”.

The Commission is clearly taking its latest challenge very seriously. Reichenbach's new directorate-general will be four times the size of the existing DGXXIV. Of the 400 officials working in it, some 118 will be moved from other departments, while 165 will be new appointments.

Decisions on staff redeployments are not expected before the end of April. This is the deadline for the Commission to bring forward what Reichenbach describes as “the first concept of how scientific advice

will be organised - an area heavily criticised, and rightly so, by the Parliament”.

Existing scientific committees will be given their mandates under the supervision of the new steering committee. But Reichenbach insists the shift in responsibilities will not upset the smooth running of the committees.

The 52-year-old German is not promising overnight miracles, stressing certain key changes to veterinary and health controls “can only come in the longer term”.

The most open question is what the Commission does with its long-stalled proposals for an independent veterinary and plant health agency.

Reichenbach believes the resistance of some member states to the idea is beginning to weaken in the light of the BSE crisis. “My preference is first of all to have an in-depth analysis. Work has already been put in hand to look into control systems in member states and third countries to find a model which seems the most appropriate,” he said.

Despite Commission President Jacques Santer's enthusiastic sponsorship of a US-style Food and Drug Administration for the EU, Reichenbach suggests “this is not at first sight the model”, largely because the FDA is primarily responsible for scientific advice rather than health controls.

ENDS 600 words