|
Matthew Vella
The Nationalist Party has been awarded a major EUR565,000 (Lm244,000) contract from the EU for providing a daily press review to the Commission representation in Ta’ Xbiex.
The European Commission is however claiming there is no “situation of conflict of interest” with the fact that the company that will be carrying out the daily review is owned by the PN.
The PN will effectively be paid Lm200 every day for a press review prepared by its in-house research bureau, which also provides the party with its own press review every day.
MaltaToday is informed that other independent companies with no links to either political party had their tenders turned down.
The contract for the press review was won by Media.Link Communications, which is owned by the PN. Deputy Prime Minister Tonio Borg, is both a nominal shareholder and a director of the company.
But a spokesperson for the Commission’s vice-president Margot Wallström, has insisted the Commission was aware that the contract had been concluded with a PN-owned company.
“The fact that a tenderer was owned by a political party was not considered to be a situation of conflict of interests as defined in the tender specifications,” Mikolaj Dowgielewicz said.
According to the service contract, contractors have to “abstain from any contact likely to compromise his independence” and “take all necessary measures to prevent any situation that could compromise the impartial and objective performance of the contract. Such conflict of interests could arise in particular as a result of… political or national affinity.”
Dowgielewicz said excluding Media.Link for this reason “was considered as unjustified with respect to the public procurement regulations.”
The head of the representation of the Commission in Malta, Joanna Drake, said she had nothing to add to the Commission’s reply: “it happened before my time and I have no comment to make,” Drake, a former PN candidate to the European Parliament, said.
Drake took over from former head of representation Ronald Gallimore in October 2005, just a month after the PN clinched the half-million euro contract.
Commission spokesperson Dowgielewicz said Gallimore’s involvement had been “very limited” and that “he was not involved at all in the proposition of the award made to the committee in Brussels which adopted the binding opinion on the award.”
But Dowgielewicz was unclear about what trust the Commission representation could enjoy with such close ties to a political party: “the important element for the Commission in public procurement is value for money for the European citizens… in the case of Media.Link Communications, we are happy they are able to provide the most cost-effective service for the Commission as they have for their other customers.”
Media.Link operates the Informa bureau which will be providing Drake’s office with a daily review of the written and audiovisual press. The two contracts have netted the PN EUR235,000 and EUR330,000, spread over five years.
Media.Link first won the audiovisual contract in July, in a competition which attracted three bidders. The press review contract was not awarded to any of the five bidders, “all offers being irregular or unacceptable.”
The company later also won the press review contract on the strength of a negotiated offer, in September, beating another bidder for the EUR235,000 contract.
mvella@mediatoday.com.mt
|
