Whistleblower sacking went against disciplinary advice

Date:24/07/03

By David Cronin

THE top official at the European Court of Auditors decided to overrule recommendations of a disciplinary board when he sacked whistleblower Dougal Watt, European Voice has learned.

Scotsman Watt, who last year alerted MEPs to claims of mismanagement, nepotism and sexual harassment at the Luxembourg-based Court, was told of his sacking just 30 minutes before he had arranged to meet friends to celebrate his 39th birthday (17 July).

The news came in a 12-page letter from Michel Hervé, the Court's secretary-general.

In it, Hervé said Watt had committed more serious breaches of the staff regulations, covering the EU's civil service, than an internal disciplinary board had recognized.

That board had recommended the most severe sanction he should face would be demotion from A7 to B5 grade in the ranking for EU officials; this would involve docking his monthly pay by some €2,000.

But Hervé decided to go further by dismissing Watt outright.

Speaking to European Voice this week, Watt said he believed Hervé's unwillingness to accept the board's recommendations indicated the secretary-general was prejudiced from the beginning. Watt is planning to appeal against his sacking to the European Court of Justice.

Hervé was not available for comment this week. However, another senior figure in the Court denied the Frenchman had any personal bias against Watt. The source said that Hervé was entitled to sack Watt under the staff regulations and that the Court hierarchy believed the Scotsman had made false allegations against other public servants.

Nevertheless, it has now emerged the five-member disciplinary board issued an opinion on 13 May, stating that Watt seemed to be acting with a "strong, perhaps exaggerated, sense of the importance of what he was doing for the protection of the [European] Community's interests" in blowing the whistle.

The board also concluded, though, that Watt had resorted to "extraordinary vehemence" towards the Court's hierarchy between September and December of 2001.

During that time he raised strong complaints with the institution's highest echelons about an alleged murder case, in which the board considered he had no personal interest. Based on this vehemence, the board felt that by going to MEPs with his concerns, Watt was motivated by a desire to achieve "maximum effect" as well as by a "preternaturally keen concern for the public good".

In a new letter to MEPs, Watt reminded deputies on Tuesday (22 July) he had last year been elected to the staff committee at the Court, after asking colleagues to vote for him if they shared his concern about alleged malpractices.

"Since my dismissal has not been justified by the outcome of the disciplinary board," he wrote, "the sanction applied in my case is therefore presumably intended to intimidate other staff of the Court - 205 of whom supported my original allegations, in a secret ballot organized by the institution itself."