By Martin Banks - 12th July 2010
The commission's attitude breaches the principle of sincere cooperation
Paul de Clerck
The European ombudsman has found the commission guilty of maladministration for failing to disclose correspondence with carmaker Porsche about CO2 emissions cars.
The ruling by Nikiforos Diamandouros follows a complaint by Friends of the Earth Europe.
In a letter to Friends of the Earth last week, the Greek official said that by "failing to properly justify why it refused access to three letters… the commission committed an instance of maladministration."
The case began when commission officials refused to grant Friends of the Earth Europe access to three letters relating to car CO2 emissions which the German car company, Porsche AG, had sent to former commission vice-president, Günter Verheugen in 2006 and 2007.
In March this year the ombudsman took the unprecedented step of involving parliament in the case.
This prompted the commission to finally release the letters but only partial information was disclosed.
The commission stated that disclosure of the letters would "undermine the protection of the company's commercial interests".
It said it had carried out "the public interest test" and concluded that Porsche's commercial interests outweighed the public interest in disclosing the letters.
The Strasbourg-based ombudsman has now closed the case stating that the executive's failure to disclose the entirety of the letters is a clear instance of maladministration.
Commenting on his ruling, Paul de Clerck of Friends of the Earth Europe, said, "Despite being reprimanded in an unprecedented way by the ombudsman, the commission has stubbornly refused to fully disclose the requested documents.
"It is still unclear why the commission will not come clean about its correspondence with Porsche given that reducing CO2 emissions from transport is an issue of public interest.
"The commission's attitude breaches the principle of sincere cooperation and raises serious questions about whether it is working in the interests of European citizens."
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