Prodi snubs informants’ charter

Date: 29/07/1999

By Tim Jones and Simon Taylor

ROMANO Prodi is set to spurn recommendations from the committee of 'wise men' for a new whistle-blowers' charter and a permanent ethics watchdog for the European Commission.

Officials say the incoming president believes reforms already agreed during Jacques Santer's term in office, including the creation of a beefed-up anti-fraud office (OLAF) and changes to staff regulations, address complaints that the Commission is slow to act against malpractice.

"There are already procedures for whistle-blowers," said a Prodi aide. "Officials have the right to go to OLAF or even outside the hierarchy to the internal mediator. General principles which should be protection for whistle-blowers are already embodied in staff regulations."

But staff unions and open-government campaigners are insisting the new Commission must embrace these key elements of the committee's findings.

In their preliminary second report to MEPs, the six experts called for a "mechanism" which would allow Commission officials to complain to the EU Ombudsman, the European Parliament's petitions committee or the Court of Auditors if they felt their complaints about colleagues had been ignored.

Their recommendation is designed to avoid a repeat of the treatment meted out to Paul van Buitenen, the official whose revelations about cronyism and mismanagement within the institution ultimately scuppered the Santer Commission.

Internal auditor Van Buitenen, who believed his complaints regarding problems in the education, aid and security office budgets had not been dealt with adequately, handed over a 532-page catalogue of misdeeds to MEPs and the Court of Auditors.

Draft staff regulations which have been circulated to unions for consultation oblige officials to inform their superiors or OLAF of suspected corruption, as well as "serious breaches" of internal rules which do not add up to fraud. Their superiors are then duty-bound to inform OLAF, but only specified officers are allowed to inform other institutions.

The new president's team is convinced that if the 300-strong anti-fraud office fails in its duties, it can be held to account by the recently appointed supervisory committee which includes two judges, two lawyers and the chief of Interpol.

Leaders of the Parliament's powerful budgetary control committee agree that there is no need for new measures. "We do not need more structures; we have to see how OLAF works in practice," said Austrian Socialist MEP Herbert Bösch, who is vice-chairman of the committee.

"A general stance of zero tolerance of fraud is much more important."

But staff unions and anti-corruption campaigners disagree. "We need a procedure for whistle-blowers and there could be problems unless there is one," said Brendan Ryan of the Commission's biggest staff association Union Syndicale.

He claimed that low-level officials were reluctant to take complaints to figures seen as too close to the Commission hierarchy. "No one would think to go to the mediator," he said. "There could be an external authority or someone within the Commission who was independent."

Guy Dehn, director of whistle-blowers' action group Public Concern at Work, called on the Commission to use the UK's new Public Interest Disclosure Act as a model.

That legislation, which entered into force this month, allows employees to disclose malpractice to outside regulators so long as they act 'in good faith'. "Van Buitenen was disciplined because he went to the Court of Auditors and the Parliament but, under this new law, he could have done that," said Dehn.

Prodi's team takes a similarly sceptical approach towards a parallel proposal from the wise men, for a permanent Committee on Standards in Public Life to write and police codes on public service ethics.

"A permanent committee sounds like heavy machinery," said an aide. "We should have a good code of conduct for staff which is regularly reviewed, but there is a risk of duplication of what we are doing in other areas."