MEPs split over fraud probe into French EU information centres

Date: 28/11/02

By Karen Carstens

IN A rare move, the European Commission has decided to post the two top fonctionnaires from its Paris office back to Brussels as part of a probe into alleged misappropriation of EU funds.

According to reports, Jean-Louis Giraudi and Frédéric Magloire, director and senior administrator respectively of the Commission's delegation in France, have not been accused of wrongdoing. But the EU executive deemed their removal and relocation necessary to avoid the perception of any conflict of interest.

OLAF, the EU's anti-fraud unit, announced last Thursday (21 November) that it had launched an investigation at the Commission's request into certain suspected irregularities in the management of grants awarded in France in the area of information and communication policy.

Although OLAF's official line is to keep a tight lid on all of its investigations until they have been completed, one anti-fraud official told European Voice that the investigation is linked to Maison de l'Europe centres in France.

These are academic and other institutions that receive federal, regional and EU funding for seminars and events - all with the aim of disseminating information on European integration.

Jonathan Faull, the Commission's chief spokesman, is reported as saying the affair concerns subsidies for information activities in France. The investigation has meanwhile been linked to the Maison de l'Europe centres in Avignon and Vaucluse.

The network has grown from some 15 founding facilities in five countries 40 years ago to 128 centres across 32 countries today. German MEP Doris Pack defended the Maison de l'Europe network, claiming the alleged fraud cases involve just a handful of people.

'These are clearly individual cases that have nothing to do with the rest of the [Maison de l'Europe] houses', said the European People's Party deputy from western Germany's tiny Saarland state, where the network's headquarters are based in the regional capital of Saarbrücken.

Pack, an active advocate of the houses for decades, said this is one of the best networks that exists in Europe because it benefits young and old alike.

Funding is provided by the Commission for specific projects, she said, adding that every euro is properly accounted for.

But conservative British MEP Chris Heaton-Harris begs to differ.

'I don't like them at all,' he said. 'We should definitely call for an investigation.'

Heaton-Harris said he had not received a response to a letter he wrote more than two years ago to three privately owned UK houses asking to see their budgets.

'It just shows that the controls aren't working properly,' he said.

One media report claimed a Commission official had said the probe into the French houses was a smokescreen intended to cover up a more far-reaching corruption problem.

Roswitha Jungfleisch, the Saarbrücken-based general secretary of the Maison de l'Europe network, said this week she hoped to receive more information about the OLAF investigation after a meeting she had just scheduled with Commission officials in Brussels.

OLAF, the EU's anti-fraud unit, announced on 21 November 2002 that it had launched an investigation at the Commission's request into certain suspected irregularities in the management of grants awarded in France in the area of information and communication policy.