Brussels, 25/11/2003 (Agence Europe) - European Commissioner Vivian Reding denies all responsibility for management of the Official Publications Office of the European Communities (OPOEC) and the practices carried out by Datashops linked to Eurostat and at the OPOEC. Throughout her hearing on Monday at the budgetary control committee of the European Parliament (Cocubu), she insisted that: she had no management or inspection role at OPOEC and was only "in charge of relations" between the Commission and the Office, a political role that consists in ensuring the interests of the Office are taken into account in the legislative and budgetary proposals of the Commission. She pointed out that OPOEC was an inter-institutional body, "that is accountable to all institutions" - parliament but also the Council, the Court of Justice the Court of Auditors, the Economic and Social Committee and the Commission of the Regions and that each institution and each DG at the Commission is responsible for the loans they make available for their own publications via OPOEC. She asserted that, there was no overall monitoring to which she was subject and said that she had taken action on 3 June after having been alerted by the new Director of the Office, Mr Cranfield. According to Reding, "except for small technical problems here and there", OPOEC was "a formidable instrument".
The practice employed by the Office for which it is being criticised focuses on the envelopes for 2% of sales revenue, a priori, granted to sales outlets for promotional work. The commission indicated that this practice had been criticised by the Court of Auditors in 1997 and had been decreed that same year but a decision on the management committee and the amounts that were subsequently received continued to be used for promotional work. EUR 38 000 was still left over from it. Out of the 2% "we were quite clearly wrong", admitted Mr Cranfield. He indicated that Datashops involved triangular contracts with Eurostat. She explained that OPOEC had had a chance for "inspection" but the opportunity was missed. He declared that "we did not think it appropriate to check on what the others were doing". The rapporteur for the 2002 discharge, Paolo Casaca, (Portugal PES) was sceptical and said that responsibilities were not clear. He wanted to know what had happened to "the millions of Euros from the 2% between 1993-97. Several MEPs ,including Gabriele Stauner (Germany, EPP-ED) indicated that links between the OPOEC, Datashops and the Commission still did not appear clear to them either. Helmut Kuhne (Germany PES) was ironic with regard to the OPOEC being so important that the Commission delegated a Commissioner but at the same time this Commissioner had no responsibility for the activities of the office.