The Barroso Commission is getting deeper into a spiral of failure pushing the supreme European institution into the orbit of decay that the European Union has entered after Jacques Delors “Golden Age.” Two failures at the political level: the failure to get the European Constitution approved and, after three years, the failure to get the Lisbon Treaty approved, a light version of the Constitution, are too much for one single Commission. Yet those two historical failures are being forgotten due to the daily sinking of the European Commission.

It seems that the Barroso Commission has completely lost control over the administration. Only these past few days we are witnessing three cases where the administration plays its games under the nose of the College. As to the President of the Commission: instead of intervening and restoring order and legitimacy in his administration, he has become a spectator looking at the events apathetically. The only thing he cares for is seemingly to capitalize on the cases, finding excuses to be on the phone with “Anjela” hoping that in this way he will secure his re-election. The Eximo case, is a scandal raised by New Europe where 25million Euro of citizens’ money were to be recovered by the Commission. The money was never recovered and without a College Decision, and, without the Barroso Cabinet having any knowledge, the case was “officially” closed in June 2005 (Barroso Commission). The Eximo case is an unfolding story and we have already presented sufficient evidence for Mr. Jose Barroso to submit the case to the Belgian Prosecutors, as it happened with the Edith Cresson scandal a few years ago. New Europe will continue to present new evidence on this matter up until the Commission will come with a complete explanation on what exactly had happened, who is responsible and what provisions were taken.

In this context, last Thursday, we have applied to the European Court of Justice asking the annulment of a relevant Commission Decision refusing the release of the names of physical and juridical persons involved in the Eximo case. The grotesque attempt to entrap Mr. Fritz-Harold Wenig in acts that would constitute violation of the internal Commission rules, (an honest and capable Commission Director who has been bringing continuously obstacles to his Commissioner Peter Mandelson in his plans over quotas) is another case to which President Jose Barroso is an observer. Indeed, if the European Commission would have established a public record, published over the internet and accessible by all citizens of what treatments all Commissioners and Commission executives are receiving, including lunches and dinners with all kind businessmen, i.e. steel tycoons in London and other places as well as cruises in luxury yachts certainly it would not be Mr. Wenig but others be in newspapers’ front and back pages.

The Roaming case is another Barroso Commission failure. In few words the roaming case is simple. Realizing that mobile telephony companies were looting consumers by collecing exorbitant fees for roaming in the context of an oligopoly behaviour which has led to the violation of the competition rules, the Commission opened an investigation against Vodafone and 02 companies in the UK and T-mobile and Vodafone in Germany. When they realized that they had to impose fines of reaching in the billions of Euro to the companies under investigation, while at the same time legitimizing consumers to get money back from the mobile operators on the grounds of the Commission’s Decision imposing the fines, they decided to protect the companies and they stopped the investigation. In fact they withdrew their already launched proceedings.

It seems that in order to do it in a legitimate looking manner, the Commission services introduced a Regulation reducing roaming charges giving ample publicity to the “protagonists” Commissioner Viviane Reding and MEPs Manolis Mavrommatis and others. In reality these people were used by the Department of Competition of the Commission in order to cover up the biggest ever pillaging carried out on European consumers. Not being cognisant of this abuse, they successfully championed the interests of the Europeans to the best of their abilities. The fact that New Europe unveiled the Competition’s conspiracy over roaming was made evident by the panic displayed by the Competition spokesman Jonathan Todd in the pressroom of the Commission last Wednesday (see our web site to see the video clip or read the dialogue mot-a-mot next column). In phobic, uncontrolled language Mr. Todd, an otherwise gentle and kind Commission official, has taken simple questions personally, tried to discredit our Editor and New Europe by using unethical words and accusations such as ‘publicity stunt’ and “ludicrous” in a public forum with the press broadcast live worldwide, using wrong judgements and expressing opinions instead of limiting himself to reply to legitimate questions.

Panic is a bad advisor for public officials and in this case New Europe has been given the opportunity to file charges for slander and defamation thus bringing the Competition services to Belgian justice.

C