Kerr comes clean over top-level Shell post

By David Cronin

Date: 06/11/03

JOHN Kerr, secretary-general of the future of Europe Convention, has admitted that he failed to disclose to its full membership that he had accepted a top-level post with oil giant Shell.

But the veteran British diplomat insists that Convention chairman Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and the forum's top table, the praesidium, were made aware of his decision to take a salaried non-executive directorship with the Anglo-Dutch firm in July 2002.

Danish MEP and Convention member Jens-Peter Bonde said he was unaware of Kerr's position at Shell until this week and urged a probe to see if any conflict of interest had occurred.

"He should have been transparent," Bonde said. "I would argue that we need to see the minutes and the internal correspondence of the Convention to see if he was biased in his views.

"He should have said to us that he was appointed [to Shell] so that we knew."

Shell was a bête noire for environmentalists and human rights campaigners' in the 1990s, when it became the subject of a consumer boycott over plans to dump the Brent Spar oil platform in the North Atlantic and allegedly causing ecological damage in Nigeria's Ogoniland.

Contacted by European Voice, Kerr said he could see "no incompatibility" between his €32,000-a-year post with Shell and work for the Convention, even though its remit included working on proposals aimed at boosting EU environment policies.

Kerr was the UK's permanent representative in Brussels in 1990-95 and ambassador to the US in 1995-97.

He headed Britain's foreign office for six years thereafter, and was lured out of retirement by Giscard to take up the post of the Convention's secretary-general in March 2002. He was a key figure in drawing up the Convention's draft constitution, and some observers have gone as far as suggesting it was Kerr who pulled the strings while Giscard took the limelight. While his directorship with Shell is a salaried position, his Convention job was not. However, he was reimbursed for travelling between London and Brussels for Convention business, while rent for a "small flat" he took in the Belgian capital was also paid out of its budget.

"If your story is that in some way I was underhand, I don't think that's the case," he commented. "The praesidium was fully informed [about the Shell post] because I told them. What else should I have done - should I have stood up and told the entire Convention?"

Kerr is also currently a non-executive director of Scottish American Investment Trust.

Under the staff regulations for the EU's civil service, officials need permission from their institution's hierarchy before they can take outside posts. But these did not apply to Kerr as the Convention did not have the status of an EU institution.

John Kerr, Secretary-General of the Convention on the Future of Europe, has admitted that he failed to disclose to its full membership that he had accepted a top-level post with the Shell oil company.