Don’t get mad, organise a hearing

Neven Mates, Croatia’s member of the European Court of Auditors, was summoned by the European Parliament’s budgetary-control committee this week to explain the circumstances of his appointment.

The committee had given a negative opinion on Mates’ nomination, having crossed swords with him at a hearing in May. The Parliament’s opinion on such appointments is not binding, which MEPs are not happy with, so they try to strong-arm candidates into saying that they will accept the committee’s verdict. Mates tried to wriggle out of the question, but was forced in the end to say (and confirm in writing) that he would withdraw his candidacy if he failed to secure the Parliament’s backing.

MEPs questioned his auditing credentials, criticised his performance at the hearing, and rejected his nomination by 16 votes to 11. The full parliament followed the recommendation in June, when MEPs rejected Mates by 396 to 231, with 45 abstentions. One month later, the Council of Ministers appointed Mates anyway.

MEPs have now responded with the only tool at their disposal when they are angry with the member states – a hearing. Hence Mates’s appearance before MEPs this week. A somewhat more serious threat from the Parliament is that it might hold up nomination hearings for other candidates. The hearings of five national candidates – Nikolaos Milionis (Greece), Danièle Lamarque (France), Henri Grethen (Luxembourg), Alex Brenninkmeijer (The Netherlands) and Phil Wynn Owen (UK) (see page 17) – were set to go ahead today (7 November) but might yet be delayed.

The question that each of the candidates should be asked is just how large the European Court of Auditors should be allowed to grow. The addition of Croatia to the European Union has pumped up the court to 28 members, to the point that (just as in the college of European commissioners) it becomes hard to find meaningful job titles for them all. But who audits the auditors?

Mates’s appearance on Monday did not calm the MEPs – quite the opposite. His explanation that he had offered to withdraw his candidacy but was turned down by Zoran Milanovic?, Croatia’s prime minister, prompted Jean-Pierre Audy, a centre-right French MEP, to question Mates’s independence. His claim that the committee had not doubted his professional qualifications but put an “unreasonable emphasis” on the question whether he would withdraw caused an uncharacteristic outburst from Jan Mulder, a sober Dutch Liberal, who said there was no way for Mates to know why MEPs voted the way they did. “You will never be trusted again,” Mulder said. “You are bad for the Court [of Auditors] and you are bad for Croatia.”

? Every year, as the European Court of Auditors criticises the European Union’s accounts because the underlying payments are dotted with irregularity and error (see pages 10-11), the European Commission plaintively points out that not all the errors involve fraud. Be that as it may, over on the other side of the Atlantic, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners has designated 3-9 November as International Fraud Awareness Week. So that should help clear up any confusion.

Click Here: Cheap FIJI Rugby Jersey