Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-04-03-Speech-1-131"
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"en.20060403.11.1-131"2
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"Mr President, before I start might I ask that someone remove the ‘t’ from my name up on the screen because it is quite unnerving really!
I would like to associate myself with the comments made by Mr Stubb and Mrs Bowles, but I would like to talk about transparency in these issues. Am I the only one here to think that the behaviour in the Commission in relation to transparency in competition cases has been quite odd? It is bizarre in a way, because the Commission seems to be conducting prosecutions in the media, rather than in hearings or in courts. Before Christmas we had the strange outbursts from the Commission spokesperson in relation to the case concerning the collective selling of UK football premiership TV rights, and this tactic has been repeated in the Commission’s ongoing anti-trust investigation into Microsoft.
I certainly find it a matter of concern that the Commission, whilst acting as investigator, prosecutor, judge and jury in competition cases, can make public statements condemning the people it is investigating, or happily allow confidential documents to enter the public domain without any apparent concern or investigation. Those of us interested in transparency in the European Parliament, and indeed those of us interested in justice in the wider world, are becoming more worried that the Commission seems to be willing to ride roughshod over natural justice in its bid for a judicial and public relations result against those it is pursing.
Madam Commissioner, you have made a number of very sensible statements about the future direction of competition policy in the EU, including the statement on 13 December 2005 on improving rules for access to files in merger and anti-trust procedures. Can I humbly suggest that you circulate this more widely throughout your department, because in the recent Microsoft case and in others before that – in the General Electric case, in the Tetra Laval case and in the TV premiership football case – access to information and files you are keeping has been one of the Commission’s weaknesses."@en1
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