Fury over gag on officials in Fléchard probe

Date: 08/03/01

By John Shelley

MEPS have attacked the Prodi administration as being "more secretive" than the Santer Commission after a decision to gag officials from speaking freely to the Parliament over a fraud case.

Parliamentarians investigating the European Commission's actions over the Fléchard export subsidies fraud case say a decision not to allow officials to provide a full account of their actions shows the institution is not serious about opening itself up to scrutiny.

"I am very disappointed about the attitude of the Commission. It shows that they don't really want to be open and transparent at all," said German centre right MEP Gabriele Stauner, one of four MEPs probing the case. "The whole approach is, in my view, worse even than it was under the Santer Commission."

MEPs had been planning to cross-examine current and former officials, including the director-general of external relations Guy Legras and head of agriculture Jean-Louis Dewost.

In particular, they want to know why the Commission reduced a fine on French company Fléchard from €17.6 million to €3 million after it was found guilty of claiming export subsidies for butter supposedly earmarked for the Soviet Union but actually destined for Poland. The Euro-MPs suspect the decision was taken because of pressure from Paris.

But Budget Commissioner Michaele Schreyer has now written to the head of the Budgetary Control Committee, German centre-right MEP Diemut Theato, saying the EU executive will not release its officials from their duty of confidentiality. "If they are not allowed to tell the truth what is the point in speaking to them?" Stauner asked.

MEPs have now scrapped their plan to quiz the officials and instead are pinning their hopes on a series of interviews with Commissioners past and present, due to take place from 20-22 March.

Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy, who was Jacques Delors' chief advisor at the time the fine was reduced in 1993, and former budget Commissioner Peter Schmidhuber have indicated they will come. Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler, Schreyer and former farm Commissioner René Steichen have also been summoned.

Schreyer's spokesman Luc Véron said the Commission was disappointed that the Parliament had withdrawn its request to speak to officials, who he said would have given frank responses within the confines of their confidentiality obligation.

"The position of the Commission is very clear. We never lift the duty of discretion, which remains in place even when an employee is retired, except under very special and exceptional circumstances," he said.

The Fléchard case is one in a series of suspected fraud and bad management cases that the Parliament is considering as part of the signing-off process for the EU's budget in 1999. The French company has also been implicated in more recent allegations that it handled 'adulterated' butter, although it has not been proved that the firm knew it was contaminated.

MEPs have attacked the Prodi administration as being 'more secretive' than the Santer Commission after a decision to gag officials from speaking freely to the Parliament over a fraud case.