IRELAND'S EU Commissioner will this morning seek a week's postponement of the Commission's debate on Irish beef fines. Any such postponement is also likely to entail delaying decisions [on fines on other member states.
Mr Padraig Flynn, it is understood, will invoke a special provision in the Commission's rules which allows individual Commissioners to seek adjournment of sensitive issues for a week. He will argue that the delay is needed to get further clarification of details relating to the £93 million fines and to allow for further reflection.
This figure consists of £18 million in penalties for abuses in the tendering system for intervention contracts and £75 million for failure to provide adequate supervision of yield and quality in the beef intervention storage system. The fines relate to the years 1990 and 1991.
Mr Flynn reached his decision last night following a lengthy but unsatisfactory meeting with the Agriculture Commissioner, Mr Franz Fischler.
The Minister for Agriculture, Mr Yates, also met Mr Fischler yesterday. Last night a spokesman for Mr Yates declined to comment on the meeting or its possible postponement. In recent days, sources suggest, attempts to have the fines reduced have concentrated on substantially reducing the tendering fine and on Mr Fischler's willingness to phase and then review some £24 million of the storage fine. He is understood, however, to have been unwilling to regard any review as a formality or to suspend the £24 million before the review.
Whether a week can make any difference to positions held by both Mr Fischler, and, importantly, by the Commissioner responsible for the fight against fraud, Ms Anita Gradin, is in doubt.
But Mr Flynn may take heart from the support that emerged for some reduction at the extended meeting of chefs de cabinet on Monday evening, when even Commission President Mr Santer's own chef Mr Jim Cloos, is reported to have expressed sympathy for the Irish case.
