EUROSTAT CASE: PARLIAMENT CALMS TEMPERS ON THE EVE OF ROMANO PRODI'S HEARING.

Meeting on the evening of September 22 on the fringes of the plenary session, the Budgetary Control Committee could but acknowledge its impotence in the face of the unanimous decisions of the Conference of Presidents on September 18 regarding the staging of the hearing of Romano Prodi (see European Report 2804 for further details). These conditions have indeed even been hardened since the summary of the report by the task force led by Peter Zangl on misconduct within Eurostat and the Internal Audit Service (IAS) report on 400 contracts linking the Statistics Office to sub-contractors will not finally be available until 21h30 on September 24 to fifty or so authorised MEPs, i.e. full and deputy members of the Budgetary Control Committee and group Presidents. The complete reports will be available for consultation in the reading room at the same hour. An executive summary reviewing the progress of the OLAF enquiry - with elements of a criminal nature removed - in anticipation of its final report, still expected for the end of October, has moreover been transmitted to Mr Prodi by the Director-General of the Anti-Fraud Office, Franz Hermann Bruner, the Commission President being free to use the document as he sees fit. The team of Commissioners was expected to examine these various documents at its meeting on September 23 and settle its policy and communication strategy prior to the President's hearing.

"Our Committee's rights have been ignored in full knowledge of President Cox", according to Helmut Kuhne (PES, Germany), Socialist co-ordinator on the Budgetary Control Committee, conveniently brushing over the fact that his own group's President, Enrique Baron Crespo called for the Commission President's hearing to proceed behind closed doors, whereas Mr Cox was not opposed to the notion of a public hearing. To signal his disapproval, the rapporteur on the fight against fraud, Herbert Bosch (PES, Austria), has announced that he will not be attending the hearing despite the fact that alongside his colleague Paulo Casaca (PES, Portugal), rapporteur on the 2001 Budget discharge, and Committee Chair Diemut Theato, he was one of the three Budgetary Committee members to have been authorised by the Conference of Presidents to put questions to Mr Prodi. "You have your way of doing things, I have my own, I protested against this organisation, but that's how it is, those who want to attend will attend, those who do not wish to do so will not", said an...

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