PETER Mandelson, the European trade commissioner, was under the spotlight in Brussels yesterday about a trip to the Caribbean made at taxpayers’ expense.
One of Tony Blair’s closest advisers was caught up in the freebies scandal swirling around the EU after Mr Mandelson’s boss, Jose Manuel Barroso, the commission president, admitted taking a free holiday worth £15,000 aboard a boat owned by a Greek shipping billionaire.
Mr Barroso admitted the holiday after a newspaper in Germany saw paperwork relating to it. A spokeswoman said he had "nothing to hide and nothing to apologise for" as the trip was private.
But Mr Mandelson may yet have some more explaining to do. Although all 25 EU commissioners closed ranks - refusing to answer questions about how they spend their holidays and with whom - the British envoy to Brussels faces accusations that most of a trip earlier this year was more pleasure than business. He admitted staying "somewhere in the Caribbean" between 30 December last year and 3 January before going on to attend a trade ministers’ conference in Guiana and Trinidad. That was three days more than the official trip itself.
Officials refused to detail the payment arrangements, or say exactly where he stayed and under what terms of hospitality.
The questions came about after UK Independence Party MEP Nigel Farage tried to establish full details of the holiday arrangements of all the commissioners.
His primary target was President Barroso, who later admitted holidaying with Spirof Latsis, a shipping tycoon and bank owner. The commission confirmed that the holiday did take place, saying the two men had been close friends for more than 20 years since their days at university in Geneva.
But a commission official was unable to answer questions about the financial arrangements or where and with whom Mr Mandelson spent his holiday.
Claude Veron, Mr Mandelson’s spokeswoman, insisted that the trade commissioner operated within the commission’s rule book.
"Mr Mandelson plays by the rules. He ensures those rules are applied very strictly," she added, of the man who was twice forced from the front line of domestic politics because of his behaviour. The refusal of all commissioners to publicise details of their holidays or their hosts was condemned as "a disgrace" by Mr Farage. "How dare they believe they can refuse to be open and transparent about such issues?" he said.
The latest drama in the EU comes a week after MEPs voted to keep their perks secret, some of which were splashed over German papers yesterday and at the weekend. Massages, fango-packs - heated volcanic rock smothered on tired bodies - electrotherapy and mudbaths come free or at bargain prices to politicians in Brussels.
Hans-Peter Martin, an Austrian MEP who played a key role in exposing the scandal of EU expenses fiddles in the past, said: "This list shows they just want to make themselves comfortable while their sense of reality has self-destructed. This is a slap in the face to the taxpayers of Europe."
Among the perks are contact lenses which are subsidised by taxpayers to the tune of €300 every two years. For glasses there is a subsidy available of €216.75 every 18 months, and subsidies available for the spectacle-wearing children of MEPs at €63.46.
Thirty acupuncture treatments a year are free, 40 infra-red irradiation treatments are paid for, and up to 60 mudbaths a year - more than one a week - are also gratis.
to the top
back