Posted on 05/09/2012 3:44:36 PM PDT by Olog-hai
MEPs on Thursday (10 May) are to vote whether to punish three EU agencies for having used public money for questionable purposes and for tolerating conflicts of interest in top management. Political considerations and intense lobbying may change the outcome of the vote, however.
"There is a lot of lobbying around these agencies. People from the industries and agencies are very powerful and they talk to some of my colleagues," Romanian center-right MEP Monica Macovei told journalists on Tuesday.
In charge of looking at how 24 independent EU agencies are spending their budget, Macovei, a long-standing anti-corruption campaigner, has recommended for three of the agencies not to be given a green light on their 2010 accounts until autumn, putting more pressure on them to improve ethical standards.
The responsible parliamentary committee in March backed her proposal and recommended for the whole parliament to do the same on Thursday.
But the Social Democrats on Wednesday said they would vote against it, while Macovei's own group, the European People's Party, has agreed to flunk only two out of the three agencies—the European Environment Agency and the European Medicines Agency. The Liberals agree with Macovei on the third one, the European Food Safety Agency, but not on the other two. Greens, leftists, conservatives and independents support her on all three. …
(Excerpt) Read more at euobserver.com ...
Creating these “independent” agencies was all about protecting the corrupt culture that comes in government.
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