Corruption latest
Almost everything you have read about fraud in the commission over the past six months has come from a treasure-trove of documents collected by the Luxembourg journalist Jean Nicholas. A cheerful tabloid type, who got a temporary job running a bar in a brothel to do an expos? on the trade in Russian prostitutes, Nicholas acquired the boxloads of documents from the equally colourful Claude Perry. The Perry group of companies was for years the biggest contractor of services-from temporary staff to computers-to the commission. Now Perry is helping the police with their inquiries and Nicholas is bringing it all out in a book. The Europe of Frauds will be published in mid-March, during the week in which the Committee of the Wise deliver their own report on fraud in the commission.
Those in the know in parliament are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of juicy new tales of commissioners Edith Cresson and Manuel Marin. Those even deeper in the know are very worried because, the week after that, Dutch journalist Joep Dohrman publishes his European Circles, focusing on the networks, patronage and corruption inside the European parliament, which is hardly qualified to sit in judgement on the commission. Dohrman's book also has a long section on that other great Brussels institution, the press corps, and those of its members who have taken fat fees and subventions from the commission budget. Copies of offshore bank account statements are said to figure prominently. Some Brussels veterans from august publications are becoming almost as worried as the commissioners.
Who sunk Ludlow?
Talking of subventions from the Brussels budget, the only serious think-tank in Brussels is in trouble following an ambush in parliament. The Centre for European Policy Studies has found its budget slashed, despite the amazingly wide range of contacts of its diminutive but energetic director, Peter Ludlow. Gossip suggests that the fingerprints of Tory MEP James Elles, who is strategically placed on the Budget Committee, may be on the parliamentary axe. Other sleuths ask who might benefit from the CEPS embarrassment. They note that it has been forced into merger talks with that brash new upstart, the European Policy Centre, run by the cunning lawyer Stanley Crossick and former Guardian hack John Palmer. Merger or takeover?
Another smug Oxbridge chap
Poor Jacques Santer. He thought his name would go down as the chap who presided over the birth of the euro and the launch of enlargement. Instead he will be remembered as the political bungler who provoked the worst-ever clash between commission and parliament. So now Brussels turns to gossip about the new commission, and is admiring the fancy footwork of Christian Democrat MEP Elmar Brok, who has persuaded his Social Democrat countrymen to write back to Chancellor Gerhard Schr?der that they want Brok as the next German commissioner. The plump and popular Elmar has his bright blue eyes on the enlargement portfolio.
Whoops. So does Neil Kinnock-who also is not happy at the prospect of Chris Patten being sent out to join him at the commission. Poor Neil has already had five years of being patronised by another smug Oxbridge Tory in the oleaginous form of Leon Brittan. Now he is threatened with a Balliol man. Meanwhile, Neil's heroic decision to buy a house in the inner city rather than the plush Brussels suburbs is looking braver by the month; the Arabic graffiti has advanced to his very doorstep.
Bildt backs Ashdown
Considerable fuss among the Swedish conservative MEPs. Their formal title is the Moderate party, and they are led by former prime minister Carl Bildt, a sad failure as the EU's envoy to the Bosnian disaster. Bildt still thinks he deserves a big job-like Monsieur PESC, running the EU's notional common foreign and security policy. Such ambition requires lots of friends in Bonn and Brussels, so Carl rallied stoutly behind the commission in its struggle with parliament. Three of his MEPs, however, voted to censure the commission. Carl got very cross, issuing threats and open letters of complaint, which have provoked his MEPs to leak another reason for his support for the discredited commission. Carl came back from Bosnia with a new Italian wife whose brother happens to work for commissioner Emma Bonino.
Meanwhile, Bildt is quietly dropping the word into well-chosen ears that Paddy Ashdown is the man to replace Carlos Westendorp as High Representative in Bosnia. Not only is Paddy an ex-military man who has the ear of Tony Blair, but, Bildt adds: "Having run the Lib-Dems, Ashdown knows how to deal with a bunch of anarchists."
Banana split
Talking of uxorious conflicts of interest, Leon Brittan's cabinet got very irritated when the common European front against the Americans in the banana war suddenly developed a large hole. Italian foreign minister Lamberto Dini suggested that it was time for men of goodwill to sit down, hammer out a compromise and open EU markets to Central American bananas just as the Americans demand. Quite right, too. We are convinced that the vast estates in Costa Rica owned by his wife Donatella played no part at all in his decision.
