|
Matthew Vella
Swedish Green MEP Carl Schlyter has raised the issue of a half-million euro European Commission contract awarded to the Nationalist Party, in the European Parliament.
In his parliamentary question, Schlyter asked whether the Commission believed the award of the daily press review contract to the PN, which will provide its services to the Commission representation in Malta, will “undermine the whole spirit of Plan D for Democracy”, the Commission-sponsored debates on the EU’s future in its member states.
The PN was awarded a EUR565,000 (Lm244,000) contract from the EU to provide a daily press review to the Commission representation in Ta’ Xbiex. The European Commission, however, has claimed 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 contract was won by Media.Link Communications, a media company owned by the PN. Deputy Prime Minister and party deputy leader Tonio Borg is both a nominal shareholder and a director of the company. Party secretary-general Joe Saliba is also a director of the company.
The PN will effectively be paid Lm200 every day for a press review prepared by its in-house research bureau, which already provides the party with its own press review every day.
But a spokesperson for Commission vice-president Margot Wallström has insisted the fact that the company is owned by the PN “was not considered to be a situation of conflict of interests as defined in the tender specifications.”
According to the service contract seen by MaltaToday, contractors have to “abstain from any contact likely to compromise [their] 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.”
Spokesperson Mikolaj 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, would not comment on the matter. A former PN candidate to the European Parliament, Drake took over the representation from Ronald Gallimore in October 2005, a month after the PN clinched the half-million euro contract.
Asked about whether this contract award would undermine people’s trust in the Commission, Dowgielewicz told MaltaToday the “the important element for the Commission in public procurement is value for money for the European citizens.”
European Green Party secretary-general Arnold Cassola said if Wallström failed to take “drastic action”, it would mean the European Commission “is influencing the course of the democratic political debate in Malta by financing one particular political party indirectly.”
mvella@mediatoday.com.mt
|
