By Bruno Waterfield - 23rd November 2004
José Manuel Barroso is “100 per cent” behind his European Commission team – including French EU transport chief Jacques Barrot.
The commission president told newspapers that it would have been “useful” to know of Barrot’s involvement in a French party political funding scandal.
But following a legal letter from the Frenchman, concerning the nature of his conviction and subsequent pardon, Barroso is satisfied.
“I support 100 per cent all my commissioners,” he told the Independent.
“The letter responds to all these allegations. I consider the letter gives all the necessary clarifications.”
Barrot has written a lengthy legal explanation to the European Parliament setting out the circumstances of his 2000 conviction.
He has come under fire, with calls for him to resign, for a failure to inform either Barroso or MEPs of the case.
The eight month suspended jail sentence Barrot received was automatically wiped clean on judgement by a 1995 presidential amnesty – introduced by the incoming French President Jacques Chirac.
Barrot was then innocent under French law – and also unable to appeal the case, during which he protested his innocence.
The case was not unusual: until 1991 there was no legal system governing party political finance in France.
The 90’s saw French politicians from across political parties investigated and in some cases convicted – often for offences relating to before 1991.
Barrot insists that with no question of personal enrichment, no bar from public office and a wiped record he has not misled MEPs over the matter.
“I did not think it necessary to mention a sentence covered by an amnesty in a case which, at the time, had been widely publicised,” he wrote in a letter to parliament chief Josep Borrell.
Barrrot’s move to justify himself in legal terms may have paid off, after Socialist MEPs backed off on Monday.
Martin Schulz, leader of parliament’s second biggest political bloc, described the issue as “a legal controversy” and a matter for the lawyers to sort out.
“The Socialist group advised both Mr Barroso and Mr Barrot to provide the president of parliament with a legal explanation of this case,” he said.
“If the legal service considers that the explanations given in this letter are satisfactory, then as far as the Socialist Group is concerned, the affair is over.
Schulz also revealed that he had received an apology from Barrot for not making the offence and the amnesty public.
“Mr Barrot has expressed to me his regret that he did not bring up this issue earlier,” he said.
But legal moves will satisfy many MEPs, including the parliament’s third largest Liberal group leader Graham Watson.
“This is not a legal but a political affair. Mr Barrot was convicted of corruption,” he said on Monday.
“He did not see fit to inform the Presidents of either of the European Commissions to which he has been nominated, or the European Parliament, though he must have known that such a matter would be considered to be of material interest in other EU countries.”
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