The European Ombudsman has criticised the EU Commission over the appointment in 2007 of former European Parliament president Pat Cox as an adviser to an EU commissioner, writes Arthur Beesley.
Mr Cox had rejected a complaint to the ombudsman about the commission’s handling of his appointment.
The ombudsman, which investigates complaints of maladministration against the EU institutions, said the commission failed to obtain a declaration “on the absence of a conflict of interest” before nominating him as adviser to then consumer affairs commissioner, Meglena Kuneva.
Brussels-based transparency group Corporate Europe Observatory had complained that Mr Cox was a lobbyist for a number of major international firms while advising the commissioner.
Mr Cox told the ombudsman’s inquiry that the complainant “misrepresented poor basic research” and said the complaint mixed “truths, half-truths and falsehoods” with “inflation, conflation and innuendo”.