Brussels, 30/09/2002 (Agence Europe) - The Director General of DG Press & Information, Jonathan Faull, announced on Monday that he had provisionally suspended a contract he had hiemslef signed for external companies to draft information packs on European Commission activities, for the time it requires to learn the lessons of what now seems to be a management error, following revelations in the French newspaper Le Monde on 29/30 September 2002.
The contract worth EUR 23 million over five years had been signed with a consortium called Ascii, but partly benefited a communications and lobbying company called GPlus Europe, set up by former Commissioner spokespersons, one of whom, Peter Guilford (deputy Commission spokesperson who therefore worked closely with Faull) is on leave. The other founder, Nigel Gardner, was spookesperfson for the Competition Commissioner at the time of Commissioner Brittan but (in contradiction to what was impled by Le Monde) he was never an official (only having a Temporary Agent contract). Michael Tscherny, former spokesperson to Mario Monti before leaving to go on leave a few weeks ago, is now working for GPlus.
The contract in question seemed a priori to meet all the legal requirements (Faull said the individuals were perfectly legitimate on the labour market and their company had logically been selected in a call for tender because it was the best project, the advisory committee on purchasing and contracts having controlled the process as normal) but the Commission wanted to use the time it had suspended the contract to consider the matter from an ethical and political viewpoint, namely whether it was appropriate to allow officials on personal leave to benefit from private sector Commission contracts.
The case raises other important questions, like various officials moving immediately over into the private sector (and even toing and froing between the Commission and the private sector), especially when the individuals in question work in an area in the private sector that is close to their Commission activity. In fact, GPlus' assignment was to circulate information about the Commission's activity every day although its managers point out that writing brochures is the task of a former British journalist.
The contract raised no eyebrows when it was signed, but the case could now lead to changes in various clauses of the Terms and Conditions for European civil servants or a restructuring of DG Press to prevent any future risk of conflicts of interest (along the lines of changes at DG Competition).