Europe is out to get me

Publication date: 11 January 1999

Paul van Buitenen blew the whistle on huge levels of corruption within the European Commission. Now, he says, they've made him a non-person. Stephen Bates reports

Monday 11 January 1999 17.06 GMT Last modified on Wednesday 20 July 2016 05.57 BST

Share on LinkedIn Share on Google+

Save for later

As he looks out over the bleak, muddy Flemish fields that surround his neat modern home near Brussels, Paul van Buitenen is discovering just how chilly being a whistle-blower can be. The mild-mannered, 41-year-old Dutch accountant has just made sweeping allegations of corruption and cronyism in the European Commission, where he works.

Just conceivably, they could bring down the 20 commissioners who head the institution when the European Parliament votes on a motion of censure this Thursday.

But for now, he is the only man out on his ear. It is an unnerving experience for a career bureaucrat to be flung into outer darkness by his organisation. In the face of barely veiled allegations that he is mad, he has been attempting reasonably, quietly and impressively to put his case.

Van Buitenen is a classic example of the civil servant who, after years of toil, finally turns on his institution because of his disgust at what has been going on. He makes an unlikely rebel with his receding hair, steel-rimmed spectacles and collar and tie. But then, that is perhaps how whistle-blowers always are.

Complaints of corruption and mismanagement have hung around the EU for years but they are now on a scale that seriously calls into question the Commission's competence. An auditors' report last November estimated as much as £3 billion - 5 per cent of the entire EU budget - could not be properly accounted for.

Only a small fraction is down to fraud - much more is due to failure to administer budgets properly in the 15 member states that are responsible for 80 per cent of EU spending.

The figure may not even be out of line with the level of waste in national budgets. But through a mixture of complacency and unconcern the Commission has failed to tackle the problem in the EU and stands accused of incompetence.

It hurts. Van Buitenen, currently sitting at home wondering how he will pay his mortgage and meet his legal costs on half a salary - which will be about £18,000 - blinks behind his spectacles in astonishment.

"I admit that part of my motivation is that I am a Christian. They are now saying I am a fanatic because I go to church sometimes on a Sunday. I did not realise that was an offence.

"Then they say I am an extreme right-winger. I am not, I am a member of the Green Party. I am being stigmatised." He was escorted from his office by security men last week. His computer access has been cut off. He is a non-person. Accountants in mid-career with a wife, two adolescent sons and a house in the country are not supposed to find themselves in this sort of trouble.

He still believes in the European ideal, which is why he is so incensed that it is being threatened by what he sees as institutional corruption.

"I still have European idealism but bit by bit you discover strange practices going on. Other priorities seem to count. I think the Commission has not taken irregularities seriously, they have wanted to mind their own business. The anti-fraud unit does not like to start investigations against high-ranking officials because there are risks involved.

"The Commission wants to end my career but I think my position is defendable. The allegations are so serious and so well thought-through, based on documents, that a reasonable person would admit they give grounds for concern. But I admit I had problems with my conscience." Van Buitenen is certainly tense - who wouldn't be? - but he gives few indications of being unbalanced. His house is a perfectly normal modern suburban villa. No shrines or icons are in evidence on the walls as a succession of Continental television crews - German, French, Belgian, Dutch - beat a path to his living room. The BBC has trailed him round the parliament.

He claims: "My colleagues are sympathetic to what has happened to me. I have their backing. They know what is going on. I have decided to go public with my situation because of the position I have been placed in." Van Buitenen has already been made to pay dearly: suspended on half pay, publicly denounced by Jacques Santer, the Commission president, and suffering private character-assassination by other commissioners.

The allegations themselves are sensational, although many relate to incidents that are already known and which the Commission has investigated, using van Buitenen as part of the team. They include 11 areas of mismanagement or fraud involving millions of pounds.

In the tourism budget, it is now accepted that officials siphoned off EU funds directed to bogus research projects.

The dossier also claims that senior staff working for Edith Cresson, the former French prime minister, now education commissioner, were engaged in fraud and the awarding of contracts to friends and relatives.

Certainly Madame Cresson's former dentist and close friend Rene Berthelot - registered as living at the same address - is now a consultant to the Commission and his son has been awarded a contract. Cresson denies any impropriety.

Van Buitenen spent part of last week being hauled round like a prize exhibit by the Tories and the Greens. But will they continue to press his case once he has ceased to be useful as a means of attacking the Commission? In a maladroit act of institutional wilfulness, van Buitenen was quietly suspended the day before the parliament voted - and rejected - the 1996 budget. The Commission did not announce the suspension at the time, and the action appears to have been taken without consulting a personnel officer, on whom the commissioners are fast dumping responsibility.

It matters little, as far as van Buitenen's career is concerned. While most of the officials suspected of past frauds have retired, immune from prosecution, on a European pension, he has no such assurances. He may have a clear conscience, but that will not pay the mortgage.

Persons: Paul van Buitenen (European Commission)