Bjerregaard moves to pacify ‘good friends’

Date: 26/10/1995

By Michael Mann

JUST days before Environment Commissioner Ritt Bjerregaard's controversial diaries were due to appear in shops in Denmark, she has bowed to pressure from angry colleagues by withdrawing it from sale.

Publication of extracts from Kommissaerens Dagbog (Commissioner's Diary) overshadowed this week's debate on French nuclear testing and caused the Commission acute embarrassment.

Santer was quick to stress through officials yesterday (25 October) that the diary's withdrawal had more to do with the damage it might have done the Commission than the question of any royalties Bjerregaard might earn from book sales.

But the row has highlighted once again the question of officials' outside interests, just weeks after the furore over Commission official Bernard Connolly's book The Rotten Heart of Europe.

In a terse statement, Bjerregaard claimed that the book was intended to inform the Danish public about the workings of the Commission and regretted that “good friends have felt abused and deceived”.

“It is senseless to have my political work discredited by publishing this book, when in the first instance the aim was to enhance public understanding of the work of the EU,” Bjerregaard concluded.

It may be too late. One Danish daily newspaper was planning to publish the diary in full today (26 October).