Brüner’s second term puts Kallas in firing line

Date: 23/02/06

The decision of the European Commissioners last week (14 February) to re-appoint Franz-Hermann Br�ner as director-general of the Commission's anti-fraud office, OLAF, surprised many people.

As comebacks go, this was an extraordinary achievement. A year ago, Br�ner was fighting for his bureaucratic life. With OLAF under a cloud, bogged down in fights with its supervisory panel and blighted by public relations fiascos, Siim Kallas, the commissioner for the fight against fraud, had taken the decision not to renew Br�ner's mandate which was to expire in March 2005 but instead to advertise the post externally.

That, in itself, was a less than ringing endorsement of Br�ner's work in the first five years of OLAF, created after the succession of fraud scandals that sank the Commission of Jacques Santer and with it OLAF's predecessor, UCLAF.

The appointment process dragged on through the summer of 2005, complicated by changes in the supervisory panel, with which Br�ner had long since fallen out.

By September, when a shortlist of candidates was published, Br�ner's hold on office looked even more precarious. Strong candidates had come forward and were interviewed, first publicly by the European Parliament's budgetary control committee (COCOBU), and then privately by a Council of Ministers troika with representatives of the UK, Luxembourg and Austrian governments. The appointment was, on paper at least, to be made by the Commission, in consultation with the Parliament and the Council. In practice, Kallas needed agreement from the other two institutions to the appointment: no director-general could function, as head of an office which scrutinises the staff and work of all three institutions, if he or she was appointed against the will of one of those institutions.

After its hearings in October, COCOBU gave Bj�rn Eriksson, a Swedish provincial governor, 20 votes and Br�ner 14 votes. At the end of December, the EU ambassadors came down in favour of the French candidate Alain Gillette, director of external audit at the United Nations, adding that "in this order, Mr Eriksson and Mr Br�ner could be suitable".

On the face of it, it might seem that Eriksson would be the compromise candidate. But when representatives of the three institutions met on 7 February, Br�ner emerged as the name to which all sides would sign up.

How did that happen? Commission officials shrug their shoulders and say that the MEPs wanted Br�ner. Some of them undoubtedly did. There was a strong German lobby, with support from the Italians. But other MEPs expressed disagreement, ranging from surprise to indignation

The difficulty on the Council side was that its favoured candidate, Gillette, had not found favour with the Parliament. To press his case would, at the very least, have involved reconvening a hearing with MEPs. That left them with either Eriksson or Br�ner and the lobbying from the German side was much more powerful than anything the Swedish side could offer.

When his appointment was announced, Bruner thanked the three institutions "for their trust". That trust is thin. A spokesman for the French permanent representation said: "We did not feel that the Council's views were fully taken into consideration and might think twice about entering again into such a procedure."

A statement put out by Br�ner's office last week made little attempt to hide the psychological damage. "OLAF has suffered," he said, "at the hands of a small number of individuals interested for diverse reasons, in compromising the renewal of the director-general's term in office."

Uncertainty about the leadership of OLAF had left it "in a situation of fragility", he went on. This hardly smacks of a man putting the troubles of the past behind him. But if OLAF is to take up its true role, protecting the financial interests of the EU, then Br�ner will need greater magnanimity. Happily, there is a new supervisory panel in place, with which he ought to be able to build better relations than he endured with the old panel.

But if the inter-institutional battles continue, then it will not just be OLAF which suffers. The Commission's reputation for improving financial control and fighting fraud is in rehabilitation - recovering from the damage done by the Cresson, Eurostat and Andreasen affairs. If Br�ner does not improve the reputation of OLAF, then Kallas's reputation, too, is on the line.

Analysis feature looking at the surprising re-appointment, on 14 February 2006, of Franz-Hermann Brüner as Director-General of the Commission's anti-fraud office, OLAF.