Brussels, 02/12/2003 (Agence Europe) - During a hearing in Brussels on Tuesday morning before MEPs of the Parliamentary Committee on Budgetary Control (Cocobu), Commissioner Pedro Solbes refused to assume political responsibility for the financial embezzlement affairs at Eurostat, and ascribed much of the blame to the office's former director, Yves Franchet. Mr Solbes flagged up the communication problems between Eurostat's Directorate General and its services, and listed reforms undertaken since the beginning of his term and those in the action plan, designed to remedy the errors detected since the summer. Commissioner Chris Patten defended himself vigorously, stating that if he had to decide today to conclude the contract which was signed back then with the dubious company CESD, he would do it again.
On various conclusion of the internal audit report, Mr Solbes indicated that the report refers to "clear deficiencies in the former Eurostat director's communication system with the organisation's management team, with myself and my cabinet, especially as regards past problems". "I think that this problem goes some way to explain the crisis, but certainly not everything that happened", said the Commissioner, who stressed the fact that this problem shows that "the information I had was not sufficiently clear to allow me to take measures which would have been necessary, had I known all the facts". Mr Solbes went on to declare, in his defence: "do you think that, had I known everything which has subsequently been revealed, I would have acted the same? What advantage could there have been for me not to follow these indications? And do you think that this is how I am used to act in other situations?". Mr Solbes explained that the information received had been "thin and conciliatory", and that answers to the questions put had been provided. Measures to amend the situation did not allow all problems to be resolved, added Mr Solbes, who admitted that there were mistakes that could not be perceived at the time. Mr Solbes said that the reform currently underway and the measures taken "will make it considerably harder for similar things to happen in future".
In answer to the MEPs' many questions on the political responsibility to draw from this affair, Mr Solbes acknowledged that he went along with the definition by Romano Prodi ("the President of the Commission can ask a Commissioner to take individual responsibility, and for him or her to resign in cases whereby the rules of collective responsibility have been violated, of culpable behaviour or when he or she has not fulfilled his or her duties", said Mr Solbes). The Commissioner said, however, that the internal audit service's report affirmed "that there were not the conditions necessary for political check" on Eurostat. Mr Solbes also pointed out that these were practices going back before September 1999.
Michiel van Hulten (PES, Netherlands) asked what Mr Solbes' role had been between 1999 and 2003 "in making sure that Eurostat was correctly managed". Mr Solbes answered that the report by the Commission's "Task Force" says that during that time, "there were gradual improvements in the management of Eurostat, related to the implementation of the reform".
British Conservative Christopher Heaton-Harris challenged the foundation of the Commission's decision that in the future, most jobs previously undertaken by external companies would be carried out by Eurostat employees (Mr Solbes stressed the need to "internalise" more of the Eurostat which had been "externalised"). According to Mr Heaton-Harris, "this is not the answer. We need good contract management and we need to respond to complaints, as do all national and regional governments". "You cover Eurostat, you must correct the management culture" within the Commission, added the MEP. Mr Solbes said that "externalisation has gone so far" that we must come back a bit, recreating a fundamental internalisation system. "At the moment, we believe that the priority statistics should be considered a basic public service" and we would therefore like to bring this activity back under the umbrella of internal Eurostat activities, explained the Commissioner.
Freddy Blak (GUE/NGL, Denmark) said he thought Mr Prodi had been very clear in his definition of political responsibility ("a Commissioner is responsible for all the actions of the Directorates General under his or her jurisdiction", said the Dane); "I don't think that's what happened in this case", he observed. Mr Blak criticised Mr Solbes for being "too passive" in this case, and in the management of Eurostat, and thought it would be better if another Commissioner takes charge of Eurostat, especially as there is plenty to be going on with for the Stability Pact. Mr Solbes answered that he did not want to give the responsibility for Eurostat over to another Commissioner. "There is a lot of hard work to do to get Eurostat back on track", he added, stressing that he devoted a lot of time to this.
Jonas Sjöstedt (GUE/NGL, Sweden) wanted to know if Mr Solbes had reacted to Mr Franchet's arguments; in self-defence, the latter said that he had informed his hierarchy of the problems he had encountered, and received no response. Mr Solbes replied that Mr Franchet did not say that he had informed the Commissioner, but the "central services". Mr Franchet, furthermore, clearly stressed that a series of subjects were not brought to the Commissioner's attention, such as the audits- "because he was under no obligation to do so", said Mr Solbes.
"I find the Commissioner's answers extremely worrying", said Morgens Camre (UEN, Denmark), doubting the assurances that "everything will be reformed and things will all be in order". "The changes made since 1999 have been very important", explained the Commissioner, with particular reference to the new structure of the financial audit.
Mr Patten persists on subject of CESD
The day before, Commissioner for External Relations, Chris Patten, told MEPs that if he had to decide now whether to conclude the contract to carry out a census in Macedonia with the company CESD, based on the information available to him in 2001, he would do so again. With hindsight, it is true that the recommendation made at the time by Eurostat's management to use CESD (a non-profit making company) could have aroused concern, but the reasons for following up this recommendation were then valid ones, said the Commissioner. Mr Patten explained that this census was a key element in the Lake Ochrid framework peace agreement (which prevented a civil war from breaking out in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia). He pointed out that the Commission had made a commitment to the government of FYROM to carry out a census as quickly as possible, and that was why the decision was taken not to have a public tender. Mr Patten said that it took much longer than planned to carry out this census, due to the security conditions on the ground. The Commissioner stressed the CESD was one of very few statistics companies capable of carrying out this kind of census. In fact, the company was set up in 1989 by the Director General of Eurostat, Mr Franchet, because there were no private companies on the market capable of such work.
The MEPs asked Mr Patten to explain why he used CESD at a time when the company had been criticised, notably by the Court of Auditors (on its funding by Eurostat), and when the head of the Finance Unit of EuropeAid had expressed concern over the absence of a public tender for the Macedonia census. Mr Patten explained that there had been discussions within EuropeAid on whether CESD should be used for the census, and that the conclusion was positive, a decision he stands by today. Paulo Casaca (PES, Portugal), who went on the attack against Mr Patten much more (but was the only one to defence Mr Solbes: Ed) observed that when the proposal to use CESD was presented to the College of Commissioners, no mention was made of the urgency of the matter. The MEP said that even had he not known about the existence of the audits, the allocating contracts of a total value of some 10 million EUR to one company without a call for tenders should have set the alarm bells ringing.
The result of the hearings of both Commissioners (plus that of Commissioner Viviane Reding last week) on the Eurostat affair will be used to draw up Mr Casaca's report on the follow-up to the execution of the 2001 budget. This report will be examined by the European Parliament in mid-December.