Latest Eurostat revelations shift spotlight onto Reding

Date: 02/10/03

By David Cronin and Dana Spinant

MEMBERS of the main financial watchdog in the European Parliament are at odds over whether more commissioners should be questioned over the Eurostat scandal.

Socialist MEPs are calling for Viviane Reding, the education and culture commissioner, to give evidence to the Parliament's budget control committee (Cocobu) over links between the EU's data agency and the European Publications Office. They insist the Luxembourg conservative bears political responsibility for the latter, but centre-right deputies argue that it is senior officials from the European Union's institutions that have a case to answer, rather than Reding.

To date, the publications office (OPOCE) is the only other EU department to have been connected with the allegations of fraud at Eurostat.

An internal probe at OPOCE, which has acted as a sales agent for books and CD-Roms published by Eurostat, has revealed the existence of an unauthorized account containing €62,000 of taxpayers' money. Two inquiries - one by OPOCE itself and the other by EU anti-fraud office OLAF - are continuing in a bid to determine whether further irregularities occurred.

The Socialists are concerned that all the attention in the Eurostat affair has been focused on commissioners from left-leaning political backgrounds, particularly Pedro Solbes, the economic and monetary affairs chief, who was a minister in Spain's Socialist government during the 1990s.

Some deputies from the European People's Party (EPP) are urging that Tom Cranfield, director of the publications office, and David O'Sullivan, the European Commission's secretary-general, should address Cocobu, instead of Reding.

Unlike most EU departments, the publications office is managed by a board with representatives from different institutions; O'Sullivan currently chairs that board.

Spanish EPP member María Antonia Avilés accused the Socialists of playing a 'political game'. “They are looking to pin responsibility on commissioners who do not belong to their own parties,” she said.

Last night Reding distanced herself from responsibility for OPOCE. “The publications office is an inter-institutional office and is not a Commission service,” she told European Voice. “Its management is supervised by the secretaries-general of all the institutions.

“The director of the publications office is available to explain or describe any part of the office's activities to any of its stakeholders at any time.”

Portuguese Socialist Paulo Casaca said he was not convinced by assurances from the Commission that OPOCE only had a role in “cashing receipts” from Eurostat.

“It is an integral part of the scandal,” he said. “Even if it did not manage slush funds [set up by Eurostat], it could not have been unaware of their existence.”

But Cranfield refuted this claim: “As far as I know, no member of staff in this office was aware of any illegal cash management by any member of staff in Eurostat or anywhere else.”

The Irishman added that the internal probe in the office, being conducted by a four-member team, is due to be completed by 15 November.

In a separate move, Chris Patten, the external relations commissioner, wrote to Cocobu chairwoman Diemut Theato on Monday (29 September) to defend a €1-million contract which the Commission awarded to the firm CESD, which boasts ex-Eurostat chief Yves Franchet as a former president and is one of the main companies implicated in the Eurostat scandal.

Patten's letter, obtained by this newspaper, explained that the company was hired in December 2001 to work on a census in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia (FYROM).

“CESD had been directly involved in the previous census in FYROM and was considered at the time to have the best

possible technical expertise to carry out the monitoring activities set out by the Commission and the government of FYROM,” he wrote.

“The advice of Eurostat, agreed by the responsible Commission services, the Council of Europe and the FYROM authorities, was that CESD was the sole organization capable of meeting those objectives, and it was on that basis that the Commission accepted this choice.”

Meanwhile, former competition commissioner Karel van Miert said he was contemplating legal action over an inference in a report drawn up the Commission's Internal Audit Aervice (IAS) that he was involved in the Eurostat scandal.

The IAS document refers to his joining a supervisory board of a firm in 2001 which received a €4.4 million Eurostat contract the same year. This contract is currently under investigation by the IAS as part of a sample of 400 deals between Eurostat and outside firms that it is analyzing.

Van Miert confirmed he had taken a post with Dutch engineering firm DHV, but insisted he had no involvement in securing the contract with Eurostat. He said: “I am going to ask the Commission if someone is using my name improperly. And if there is, I will be going to a court.”

Officials in Luxembourg claimed yesterday that efforts to discredit Eurostat and the publications office were partly motivated by the desire of some politicians to move EU agencies from the Grand Duchy to Brussels.

Socialist MEPs have called for Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Education and Culture, to give evidence to the European Parliament's Budget Control Committee over links between Eurostat and the European Publications Office.