Ex-spokesman lifts lid on press relations

Date: 11/06/1998

Ole Ryborg
A FORMER European Commission spokesman has followed in the controversial footsteps of his boss by writing a book giving an intimate insight into what really goes on behind the scenes in the corridors of power.

Environment Commissioner Ritt Bjerregaard sparked a storm three years ago when she penned a diary giving a detailed account of life in the top echelons of the Commission, littered with somewhat unflattering comments about several of her colleagues.

Now John Iversen, who was Bjerregaard's spokesman when she first came to Brussels and is now a Danish MEP, has published an equally frank account of what really goes on in the Commission Spokesman's Service.

Iversen's book (Hunden op at hænge), which paints a revealing picture of how the spokesmen and women for the 20 Commissioners see their relationship with the Brussels press corps, is likely to prove just as controversial.

He suggests, for example, that one of the service's prime goals was to produce such well-written press releases that they would appear unedited on the pages of newspapers across Europe. "The better we did our job, the easier it would be to get it untouched on to the pages of the newspapers without any work for the journalist other than putting his or her name to it," he writes.

Iversen also claims that most journalists in Brussels are just as loyal to the European Commission as the people who actually work for it. He maintains, for example, that when former senior Commission official Bernard Connolly published his controversial book on economic and monetary union, many reporters in Brussels were reluctant to write about it unless forced to do so by their employers at home.

The former spokesman adds that "it is clear that certain French journalists get special treatment in the EU system all the time", and claims "some English-speaking journalists kept airing their Francophile tendencies by continuing to speak bad French in the press room" after the language regime at briefings was changed to allow reporters to put questions in English.

In his book, Iversen gives a detailed account of the salaries and other perks available to employees in the EU institutions, stating that they are not only paid extremely high wages but also benefit from special shops, restaurants and cafeterias subsidised by the Union's budget.

Such advantages make it possible for EU officials to "live a life in business class", according to Iversen, who adds: "It reminds me of the dollar shops I once visited in Moscow. As in the Soviet Union, the leaders have a lot of privileges."

The Danish MEP claims it is the civil servants, along with the lobby groups, who really make EU laws, and maintains that most of the proposals which emanate from the Commission do so without the Commissioners knowing about them.

Feature on a book by former Commission spokesman John Iversen (now a MEP) called 'Hunden op at hoenge'.