Brussels, 09/01/2013 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 9 January, the Greens/EFA Group at the European Parliament called for a (temporary) special committee to be set up on ethics and transparency within the European Commission. The objective would be to throw light on the dismissal of John Dalli by European Commission President José Manuel Barroso. The decision on setting up such a special committee is due be taken by the conference of presidents of the political groups of the European Parliament, which will discuss the matter on Thursday 10 January.
It was after a complaint lodged at OLAF (the European Anti-Fraud Office) by the company Swedish Match on 21 May 2012 that John Dalli was forced to resign on 16 October (see EUROPE 10711). Swedish Match accused him of trying to obtain financial advantages in exchange for supporting the lifting of a ban on snus.
The Greens/EFA Group considers that the following elements are troubling: - OLAF's inquiry is a loaded inquiry based on the Swedish Match submission; - the five-day rule to enable Dalli to have access to the file was not respected (Dalli has never had access to the file and the OLAF supervisory committee has not had access to the file from the time it was sent to the Maltese authorities).
José Bové (Greens/EFA, France) has the feeling “that they wanted to accelerate a process to find a scapegoat”. He said that since 2001, the date of the dispute between the tobacco industry and WHO, “binding” rules have been put in place by WHO on the basis of Article 5.3 of the WHO Convention, which governs relations between the states, the institutions and the tobacco industry. “It is very clearly said that everything must be done transparently, in particular with minutes of meetings appended”. However, Bové believes that these rules “have been flouted”. Dalli acknowledges having met Gayle Kimberley (a young Maltese lawyer) in Malta on 6 January 2012, who gave him three sheets of paper on snus, with Kimberley having been paid €5,000 by Swedish Match for this. It is this for which Dalli is blamed, and it is this which contravenes Article 5.3 of the Convention. However, in Bové's opinion, a “much more serious” problem exists - the NGOs working against the tobacco lobby have proof that three meetings took place between the cabinet of Catherine Day (the secretary general of the Commission) and Philip Morris (on 3 May 2010 and 15 June 2010) and Swedish Match (on 18 September). “No minutes were taken of these three meetings” which took place right in the middle of discussions of the tobacco directive, Bové deplores. Furthermore, three other meetings took place between the cabinet of José Barroso and the German and European tobacco lobby (on 20 December 2010), Philip Morris (on 10 June 2012) and Swedish Match (on 21 June 2012). Bové believes these meetings took place in breach of Article 5.3 of the WHO Convention and could explain the postponement of adopting the proposal on the tobacco directive.
In the Commission's view, these meetings certainly took place and “all the articles of the WHO Convention were followed and applied, and transparency was applied”, a spokesperson said on Wednesday 9 January. Furthermore, the Commission says that it also had meetings with anti-tobacco lobbies.
Bart Staes (Greens/EFA, Belgium) said that the discussions in the Parliament's budgetary control committee were deadlocked. The Commission has come up against several obstacles: “We do not have the right to inspect the conclusions of the OLAF report. We no longer have access to the report of the OLAF supervisory committee which assessed this inquiry”, Staes said. There are apparently questions about how the inquiry was conducted, Staes confided. He added: “We want the rules on ethics with regard to lobbying to be strengthened”.
Commission defends Michel Petite. Staes also criticised the fact that a former director general of the Commission, Michel Petite, who left the Commission at the beginning of 2008 and who was the negotiator between the Commission and Philip Morris, has become a lawyer (for a firm in Brussels) which has Philip Morris as a client. In addition, Petite is a member of the Commission's ethics committee responsible for assessing whether the new activities of a former commissioner are linked to his former portfolio (though, the firm where Petite now works is not listed on the European register of lobbyists).
A spokesperson from the European Commission confirmed that Petite had been re-appointed to the ethics committee on 12 December and that the Commission had authorised him to carry out his legal work in Paris. “There is no reason to question Mr Petite's ability to fulfil his function as a member of the ad hoc ethics committee” (our translation throughout). According to the Commission, therefore, there is no link between this function and the work in a law firm that Petite now does after leaving the Commission. (LC/transl.fl)