Brussels, 17/11/2004 (Agence Europe) - In a letter to Graham Watson, president of the ALDE group at the European Parliament on the subject of the letter she received from Jean-Louis Bourlanges, member of the same group, about her candidacy for European Commissioner for competition, Neelie Kroes from the Netherlands sought to correct a "certain number of imprecisions" by the parliamentary freedoms committee (EUROPE 16 November p 4). Hence:
1. "On the issue of me frequently finding myself in an actual or alleged conflict of interest situation", Ms Kroes explained that, "Jean-Louis Bourlangues "quotes an impressive list of cases that go back to the 1990s and whole sectors which I should relinquish. In this context, I would like to refer to some cases, such a Microsoft and De Havilland, for whom I can barely follow his argument, given that I had no direct or indirect link with either company alluded to, apart from Volvo". The cases "in which I could be led to take either an active or passive position with regard to my previous action when I was acting at the time in the interest of the company, are exceptions". Kroes underlined that, "a simulation was carried out on the basis of Commission data and concluded that the number of cases involved, even if a broad approach were adopted, would remain much below 1% of all cases". Moreover, the assertion by Jean-Louis Bourlanges that she would not be presenting "guarantees of independence and impartiality for ruling out any risk of personal interest" appeared to Kroes to be "totally out of proportion" given that she had renounced taking a role in any company , following her mandate. Ms Kroes has criticised Jean-Louis Bourlanges for basing his judgement on the "hypothesis of conflicts of interest", alleged, which would allow it to extend its approach in a practically unlimited way. According to Kroes, if they adopted such an approach they would unavoidably end up by making the job of Commissioner for competition inaccessible to anyone who had worked in private industry.
2. On the issue of possible relinquishments operating under the authority of the Director General of Competition, Ms Kroes affirmed that this presentation had to be exact and would obviously be unacceptable but that it did not correspond to the procedure agreed with president Barroso, which "places me under his sole authority". The Director General for competition in this respect is fulfilling a simple obligation of information vis-à-vis the president and his Commissioner and to fulfil this obligation he would not act alone but on the advice of the Director General of the legal service, explained ms Kroes. "Once informed, it would be exclusively up to the president to look at the situation illustrated to him to justify any relinquishment or not, explained the Commissioner-designate, who considered that this procedure responded exactly to the scope for the president's assessment in the exercise of his power of internal organisation at the Commission under Article 217 of the EC treaty.