WRITTEN QUESTION E-3619/98

by Nelly Maes (ARE) to the Commission

(3 December 1998)

Subject: Involvement and responsibility of Commissioner Marín in the ECHO affair

In the European Commission's answer dated 11 September 1998 to the questions raised in Mr Fabra Vallés initial working document (PE 226.913) on the measures taken by the Commission in response to Special Report No 2/97 of the Court of Auditors and the ECHO affair, much information is given about the European Commission's attitude to what are called mini-budgets, whereby the salaries of external staff are paid from operating appropriations. The Commission released details of the correspondence between Commissioner Van Miert and Commissioner Marín and of that between Mr Marín's Private Office and the officials responsible for ECHO. A reading of that correspondence is most instructive.

1. How does the Commission explain away the disparities between the numbers of staff in employment which Mr Marín notified to Mr Van Miert in his letter of 24 February 1994 and those set out in the note dated 18 February 1994 from the Director of ECHO to Mr Marín's Private Office?

2. Does not the Commission find it strange that Mr Marín did not inform Mr Van Miert about the 12 members of staff who "had been irregularly recruited and charged to operating appropriations" and the four members of staff who had "been recruited and charged to the" Studies "budget line"? (See note Sgz/mg D(94) 192).

3. How did it come about that, despite Mr Marín's instructions of 24 February 1994 to the then Director of ECHO to put an end to the charging of staff to operating appropriations or study contracts, ECHO's external unit was not closed down until June 1995?

Joint answer

to Written Questions E-3613/98, E-3614/98, E-3615/98, E-3616/98,E-3617/98, E-3618/98 and E-3619/98 given by Mr Santer on behalf of the Commission

(26 January 1999)

The Commission has carefully noted the seven questions on the ECHO case asked by the Honourable Member.

The Commission would point out that, since the beginning of this affair, it has always honoured its obligation of transparency to Parliament and provided the information in its possession wherever this does not conflict with the rights of individuals or current disciplinary procedures. The Commission would therefore ask the Honourable Member to refer to the reasoned answers it has given on this case on various occasions. In particular, on 11 September 1998 and 23 October 1998, the Commission sent the Chair of the Committee on Budgetary Control and the relevant rapporteurs two series of responses to Mr Fabra Vallès' working documents.

Over the course of the last few months, the case has regularly appeared on the agenda for meetings of the Committee on Budgetary Control, which has been kept informed of developments in the case by the Commission's representatives. Ms Bonino, Mrs Gradin and Mr Liikanen thus replied at length to the questions put by Members of Parliament at the meeting of the Committee on Budgetary Control on 23 September 1998. On 28 October 1998, Mr Liikanen again summed up the situation. On 26 November 1998, at a closed session of the Committee on Budgetary Control, Mr Liikanen gave an account of progress on current disciplinary proceedings. On the same day, the Committee on Budgetary Control also heard the Commission's Financial Controller and the Director of UCLAF.

The Commission will not fail to pass on any new information on this case via the regular contacts which it has with the Committee on Budgetary Control.