Brussels, 28/11/2002 (Agence Europe) - Jonathan Faull, spokesperson at the European Commission and Director general at Press and Information, indicated on Thursday, that the Commission was going to examine whether the recruitment of Detlef Eckert, former Head of Unit at Information Society by the Microsoft group breached any professional code of conduct. Mr Eckert took leave from the Commission on personal grounds for six months to work as a "Security Officer in charge of inforamtion technology security with the company as from 2 December. The Microsoft groups has also been under investigation by DG Competition for the last three years for abusing its dominant market position, the results of which ae expected at the end of the year. The recruitment of an EU official by the US group could also pose a conflict of interest given that Mr Eckert has taken part in hearing between the Commission and Microsoft. According to Mr Faull, the Commission had received "assurances" that Mr Eckert would not work on Microsoft anti-trust issues. Mr Faull explained that, "like in the case of other people of his statute, he is bound bya code of professional conduct and confidentiality…The Commission attaches the greatest of importance to standards of ethical probity and will not spare any effort to examine all the cases submitted to it…and take the necessary measures if it transpires that a conflict of interest exists or appears to exist".
This affairs brings to mind the case of "Gplus", a communications and lobbying company set up by former Commission spokespersons and which had developed a market for information on Commission activities. The contract has in the meantime been suspended given the negative reactions to the allocation of this market to a company directed by former European officials (see EUROPE 30 September/1 October p 13). Following this affair, the Commission examined to what level certain provisions in the statute of a European civil servant should be modified in order to respond to future possibilities of conflicts of interest. Eric Mamer, spokesperson for Commissioner Kinnock (Administrative Reform), indicated that, "'a draft decision on the matter would be submitted by the end of the year, "in the framework of statue reform, we have proposed strengthening the rules on confidentiality and control mechanisms". He also explained that it was not that easy to modify a model and that the Commission should not be too hasty given the complexity of the problem.