The European Parliament is to put further pressure on OLAF, the European Union’s anti-fraud body, over its handling of the Dalli affair.
Health Commissioner John Dalli was dismissed by the Jose Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, under suspicious circumstances in October 2012, amid suggestions of impropriety.
The parliament’s budgetary control committee has already sent the president a series of questions attempting to clarify the matter. A further 140 questions have been drafted and will be presented by the committee on 29 May. The questions were largely drafted by the Greens with the co-operation of German centre-right member Ingeborg Grässle, and were put together in response to a leaked report by OLAF, which emerged at the end of April.
The committee is set to debate, along with OLAF Director General, Giovanni Kessler, the annual report of the supervisory committee of the anti-fraud office on that date.
OLAF’s investigation of the affair, and, in particular the role played in it by Kessler, has come under continued scrutiny since news of the affair broke last year.
The wide-ranging questions relate to documentation gathered in the course of the investigation, as well as investigation procedures and details of interviews, and are addressed to both OLAF, and OLAF’s supervisory board separately, as well as to the commission.
MEPs are continuing to press for clarification on the affair. On 21 May, at a closed conference of presidents meeting in the European Parliament, a motion was put forward by the Greens, represented by Co-President, Rebecca Harms, that Barroso appear before the body (comprised of the leaders of the parliamentary political groups) to explain his position.
The motion was rejected by the other groups. There has also been similar opposition to the formation of a special committee to investigate transparency in EU institutions policymaking, proposed in the wake of the Dalli affair.
Despite this apparent desire to protect the commission president, there are ominous signs for Kessler, after Grässle was given full reign to continue her inquiry into his role in the investigation by her EPP group leader, Joseph Daul. One MEP told New Europe that after this endorsement there is now “a general feeling that Kessler is on his way out.”
