EC rejects financial waste claims
The European Commission (EC) has rejected claims of financial waste despite its own figures revealing a multi-million-euro bill for travel and entertaining by senior staff and officials.
The European Union’s (EU) executive body spent €7.4m on private jets for commissioners and their advisers between 2006 and 2010, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism after a three-month study of the organisation’s costs.
The bureau, based at London’s City University, said the records show millions of euro of taxpayers’ money spent on “private jet travel, luxury five-star resorts, parties and expensive presents”.
A statement said: “Our investigation shows that commissioners were travelling by private jet and handing out gifts of Tiffany jewellery to guests as Europeans faced budget cuts and IMF bailouts.”
The bureau highlighted a bill for one trip alone of €28,000 for EC president Jose Manuel Barroso and eight assistants during a four-night stay at New York’s Peninsula Hotel during a United Nations (UN) summit.
Between 2008 and 2010 the commission spent over €20,000 on gifts, “with guest speakers being presented with Tiffany jewellery, cuff links and fountain pens”, the report said.
Cocktail parties absorbed more than €300,000 in 2009 alone, including a bill for €75,000 for an event subsidised by the EU’s Research Executive Agency in Amsterdam, and described as “a night filled with wonder like no other......state-of-the-art technology, challenging art, combined with trendy cocktails, surprising performances and top DJs”.
The study also itemises EC spending in 2009 on “away-days at five-star resorts for officials and their families in Papua New Guinea and Ghana”.
On one occasion, the EC’s Vietnamese delegation flew 44 staff to the five-star Palm Garden Resort for an event designed to “facilitate internal co-operation”.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s editor, Iain Overton, said: “Our findings raise questions not just about taxpayers’ money being wasted but also about how accountable the EU Commission is for its spending.”
An EC spokesman said: “The figures are totally taken out of context and are deliberately misrepresented. For example, the commission does not splash out money on private jets. The use of unscheduled flights is strictly regulated and only acceptable when there is no alternative.”
He went on: “It is difficult to go through all the inaccuracies of the bureau’s investigation.
“Twisting the facts to play upon peoples’ concerns during times of crisis is a cheap and unethical way to get into the headlines, especially when the commission provided the complete and correct information in the first place.
“All of this information is publicly available on our own financial transparency database, which is on our own website. There is nothing new here.”
These comments have been condemned and rejected by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, who say they stand over their report and have evidence for every expense that was claimed.
"Every expense is detailed in the report, and has been triple-checked," said Ian Overton, who added the bureau had documentary evidence to show what expenses had been claimed.
The high cost of New York hotel rooms, he said, was justified by the “extravagant” hotel rates applied in the city during the UN General Assembly meeting, and covered eight officials and the expense of hiring meeting rooms.
The commission, which says it worked with the bureau in compiling the publicly-available material, insisted it had found nothing to suggest the purchase of Tiffany jewellery, although €500 was used for “keyrings and cufflinks” as gifts for Nobel prize-winning speakers at EU events.
