Last week this blog put in a complaint to the European Ombudsman, stating that OLAF was not providing adequate information to the public about its work on two cases.

One of these cases is an investigation into the Centre for the Development of Enterprise (CDE), a development quango supporting projects in Africa. The former director (now expected to become prime minister of Mali) is alleged to have steered EU money into businesses in which he owned shares. The head of IT at the Centre, Terry Battersby, reported the conflict of interest in 2006 and in response the Commission partly blocked the EU’s contribution to the CDE’s budget.

By October 2007, Mr Battersby was presumably encountering problems in his work as a result of the claims. Labour MEP Brian Simpson tabled a question in Parliament to try to get the Commission to publicly clarify what was going on.

“What action are [the Commission] prepared to take in ensuring that any individual accused of maladministration is prosecuted, that the board which appears to have lost the confidence of our ACP partners is removed and that Mr Terry Battersby, the person who brought these alleged irregularities to light, is protected from harassment and retaliatory measures by CDE senior management?”

The Commission replied that it would “closely follow” procedures related to staff.

“The Commission, the Council Secretariat, the ACP Secretariat and the European Investment Bank (EIB) all have observer status at Board meetings. It is in the quality of observer at the meetings of the Executive Board, as well as via regular contacts with the Management and Staff Committee of the CDE that the Commission will closely follow that the procedures relating to staff are respected and has already received assurances from the Board that this will be the case.”

But whistleblowers rarely get an easy ride, and the Commission’s assurances appear to be smoke. The Times reports today that

A British whistleblower who exposed alleged corruption at a European aid agency faces the sack after he told EU fraud investigators that his boss was involved in the scam.

Terry Battersby, 53, from Manchester, has been removed from his job as head of information technology at the Brussels-based Centre for the Development of Enterprise (CDE) and placed on a short-term contract…

Brian Simpson, a Labour MEP, said Battersby had been the victim of a “witch-hunt” for having the courage to speak out. Battersby, who has worked at the CDE for 16 years, is now on a temporary six-month contract, after being denied a permanent job.

It’s well known that if you discover fraud in the EU and decide to blow the whistle, you run a serious risk of suffering for your efforts. On numerous occasions, the tables have been turned and the whistle-blower has become the subject of the investigation instead.

The EU has no adequate mechanism for protecting people who report fraud, and the Battersby case shows how much one is needed. MEPs shouldn’t have to be raising the matter in Parliament, the protection should already be in place and recognised.

UPDATE (28 April): Joy e-mails to say that the CDE isn’t an EU institution and that the Commission can’t control how it treats its staff. The money comes from the European Development Fund which is financed by the member states under the Cotonou Agreement. Hmm… I’m happy to change this post and stop accusing the Commission of involvement, but I’m pretty sure DG Development allocates the money.

So European Voice reports that the Commission will next week propose making access to documents easier for EU citizens.

Interesting stuff. I rang up the press office to find out more.

Me: Can I see these proposals?

Press officer: I will send you what I can, but at this stage there may be information which can’t be published yet.

Me: I see. There may be information about proposals to facilitate access to EU documents, but I can’t have access to it?

Press Officer: …

Me: That sounds a bit funny. Does it sound funny to you?

Press Officer: I’m not an expert. This is the press office, and I will send you details of the number you need to call for general enquiries.

In a letter to the President of the European Commission’s Data Protection working group, Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union describes how the US National Security Agency (NSA) is eavesdropping on Internet communications in Europe.

The bottom line?

“…the NSA is not just targeting individuals but is also using data mining systems to evaluate the communications of millions of people both inside and outside the United States.

This activity involves no oversight or legal protections for non-U.S. persons. As a result, the communications of European citizens are completely vulnerable to abuse. “

The letter cites a 2007 Wired article describing “How the US Became Switchboard to the World”. Essentially, ISPs not in the US wanting to route internet traffic from one country to another have traditionally found it easier and cheaper to send it via the US.

I’m not sure how significant that article is to the issue of NSA tapping into Internet traffic outside the US. It suggests that the practice is diminishing as countries improve their infrastructure and more traffic is routed locally.

So until we hear of documented instances of traffic interception the issue will be somewhat cloudy.

Well, it’s something most people knew already, but the Advocate General has now immortalised the absurdity of the EU’s tendency to secrecy in a highly critical legal opinion.

On 25 September 2005, Gottfried Heinrich was stopped before boarding a plane by Vienna airport security who didn’t like the tennis rackets he was carrying. He boarded the plane, but was then evicted. His rackets, they said, were on a list compiled under Regulation 2320/2002 as potentially being weapons.

Feeling this was a strange idea, Mr Heinrich asked what else was on the list of potential weapons.  He was told it was a secret. So, rightly wondering how the hell passengers could avoid carrying things the EU considered weapons, he brought a case requesting the information to his local court.

The Regulation does indeed say “the measures relating to … detailed procedures containing sensitive information … shall be secret and not be published”. The list of banned items contained in an annex has therefore not been published.

But the Commission had already published a partial list in a press release, apparently breaking its own law. Faced with this contradiction, the court shunted the case upstairs to the European Court of Justice, which has now issued an opinion likely to reflect the judgment when it arrives.

Advocate General Eleanor Sharpston opines that the publication of the 2003 implementing regulation without its Annex is a defective and inadequate publication

She highlights the “fundamental absurdity” in the Commission’s position: If the Commission was obliged under Regulation 2320/2002 to keep the list secret, then publication of the press release was a flagrant violation of that Regulation. If the Commission considered that the list fell outside the secrecy obligation, it ought of course to have been published in the Official Journal. Furthermore, if the basic “guidelines” indicating the kinds of articles that are to be prohibited can be published there is little logic behind not publishing what is presumably, a fleshed-out version of those guidelines. Finally, she considers it to be self-contradictory on the part of the Commission to state, in recitals to subsequent regulations that there is a need to inform the public of the list of prohibited articles and then fail to place such a list in the public domain.

So the Commission will have to publish its list.  Dare we say that this is a case of one dangerous racket trying to prevent another dangerous racket?

What’s more, the AG goes even further in her criticism, and suggests the regulation be got rid of altogether as being totally against the Community legal order.

[T]he Court should go further than declaring the regulation invalid and declare it to be non-existent. She argues that the irregularity that taints the Regulation - persistent and deliberate disregard of the mandatory publication requirement of Article 254 EC in respect of the whole substance of the Regulation - is one whose gravity is so obvious that it cannot be tolerated by the Community legal order. Such a step would make it very clear that non-publication of regulations or parts thereof - all the more so when deliberate - is unacceptable in the legal order of the European Union.

Although they want to keep information about their own expenses a secret, the Commission and Parliament have demanded that each member state create a website giving a detailed breakdown of farm subsidies, including names and addresses.

“All recipients of European Union agricultural and rural development payments will be published in detail under new rules adopted today by the European Commission. By 30 April, 2009, the full name, municipality and, where available, postal code of every recipient will be published in a clear, harmonised manner on nationally-managed websites with a search tool which enables the public to see how much money each person or company received. Amounts will be broken down in direct payments to farmers and other support measures.”

We welcome this attempt to introduce transparency into farm subsidies. But we can’t help noticing the hypocrisy of our employees (the Commission and Parliament) requiring transparency when they refuse to apply the same principles to themselves.

UPDATE: Probably worth noting that half the member states already publish this information.

Alter-EU has published a rather useful report about the “expert groups” who advise the European Commission on policy and law.

It reveals a growing problem: These groups are increasing in number (there are now about 1200), but their membership is often kept a secret and their discussions are equally confidential.

The result is that in many cases EU policy is strongly influenced by committees dominated by interest groups.

The groups are committees composed of national representatives, academics, trade associations and business people as well as Commission officials and MEPs.

Alter-EU chose a sample of groups to investigate, and requested information from the Commission. In 34% of cases, the Commission simply didn’t reply to the request. In others, they took up to 80 days to provide details. In half of the cases where the Commission did provide information, it was only partial.

Many groups are controlled by producers - in other words, the expertise they provide is likely to recommend law and policy favouring industry.

The report is well worth a read if you want to begin to understand the opaque way in which the EU goes about creating its laws. It’s available here.

The EU Commissioner for Justice, Franco Frattini, is to take some time off to campaign in the Italian elections.

And yet EU law says Commissioners aren’t to engage in any other occupation whether paid or unpaid.

“European Commission vice-president Franco Frattini, one of the most high-profile of the commission’s 27-member team, has decided to return to the realm of national politics and stand in Italy’s general election in order to boost chances of centre-right leader Silvio Berlusconi.

Mr Frattini, in charge of justice and home affairs, will take four weeks of unpaid leave from 14 March to 15 April.”

But Article 213 of the Treaty Establishing the European Union says:

The Members of the Commission may not, during their term of office, engage in any other occupation, whether gainful or not

Hmm…

If the EU were a business, it would be out of business. If people were caught systematically ignoring basic procedures to ensure effective spending in Microsoft or Shell or Suez, they would be fired.

EU accountants have been investigating whether the hundreds of billions spent on regional aid over the past ten years has been well spent.

Judging from the severe criticisms they make, it seems highly doubtful.

There are cases where nobody knew if money was needed or not, but the EU awarded grants anyway.

There are cases where grants were made even if the project was making money.

There are cases where nobody has bothered finding out if the grants were put to good use.

There are cases where people evidently tried to find out but the necessary information was unavailable.

The result is extraordinary confusion. The waste must be colossal. But who could prove it, since they haven’t bothered to keep proper records?

Furthermore the EU’s procedures offer scope for fraud on a breathtaking scale. The whole thing demonstrates the fabulous stupidity and pointlessness of the entire enterprise.

“Concerning the Commission’s preliminary examination of these projects, the Court found that:

- the examination varied in quality, no common approach having been provided for the managing departments until 2003;

- great disparities exist in the quality of the financial and socioeconomic analyses presented in support of aid applications, and many weaknesses were tolerated by the Commission. As a result, major projects were adopted although the data provided did not permit an adequate assessment;

- in spite of the improvements made by the Commission, the factors used to adjust the Community co-financing rate are not yet sufficiently precise. In the case of productive projects, the possibility of granting a loan instead of a subsidy was not examined.

The weaknesses noted give rise to doubts concerning the added value of the special approval process for major projects and have negative repercussions on the later process of ex-post evaluation.

As regards the ex-post evaluation of major projects from the 1994-1999 period (the only such evaluation that it had been possible to carry out at the time of the audit), the Court found that:

- the Member States only rarely carry out individual evaluations, and the evaluations carried out on the Commission’s initiative had very heterogeneous aims and methods;

- the evaluations were severely handicapped by the lack of pertinent and accurate information, both as regards anticipated effects and the initial situations and as regards monitoring, which often prevented an evaluation of the real results of major projects and the drawing of lessons.”

48-page PDF at:

http://eca.europa.eu/portal/pls/portal/docs/1/863518.PDF

(Hat-tip Euro-Med)

The EU’s trade commissioner Peter Mandelson may be offered a second term once his four-year stint comes to an end.

“Gordon Brown, UK prime minister, has asked Peter Mandelson if he would like to continue as Britain’s European Union trade commissioner when his term expires next year, according to officials in Brussels, in a sign that an enduring feud in the country’s politics is coming to an end.”

Bruno Waterfield foresees the creation of a “dream team” in Brussels, with Blair as president and Mandelson as trade commissioner.

Dream?