{"id":15320,"date":"2014-07-08T05:35:54","date_gmt":"2014-07-08T05:35:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/eu-commission-row-reaches-top-court\/"},"modified":"2014-07-08T05:36:49","modified_gmt":"2014-07-08T05:36:49","slug":"eu-commission-row-reaches-top-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/eu-commission-row-reaches-top-court\/","title":{"rendered":"EU Commission Row Reaches Top Court"},"content":{"rendered":"

{{The head of the European Commission has told the EU’s top court that the entire Commission’s reputation was at stake when a Maltese member of his team was found to have acted improperly.}}<\/p>\n

Jose Manuel Barroso was defending his treatment of ex-Health Commissioner John Dalli, who left his job in 2012.<\/p>\n

Mr Dalli had been accused of improper links to tobacco lobbyists.<\/p>\n

Mr Barroso told the EU Court of Justice that he had little choice but to tell Mr Dalli to go.<\/p>\n

The former health commissioner told the judges in Luxembourg that his resignation amounted to a dismissal and that he had been treated unfairly by Mr Barroso.<\/p>\n

“It was not a meeting, it was an ambush,” Mr Dalli said, referring to a key meeting with Mr Barroso on 16 October 2012. That was when Mr Barroso read out allegations against him contained in a secret report by EU anti-fraud agency Olaf.<\/p>\n

“The facts were manipulated. I did nothing wrong,” Mr Dalli told the court, alleging that the presumption of innocence had been violated and that he had been denied sufficient time to argue his case.<\/p>\n

Mr Dalli is demanding compensation from the Commission for loss of earnings. In his plea to the court he also wants an annulment of Mr Barroso’s request for his resignation and a symbolic award of one euro (\u00a30.80; $1.4) in damages for the reputational harm he says he has suffered.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

{{John Dalli categorically rejected the EU anti-fraud body’s findings}}<\/p>\n

According to Olaf, a Maltese businessman friend of Mr Dalli had sought a “considerable” payment from a Swedish producer of oral tobacco, called snus. Under the proposal. Mr Dalli would then lift an EU ban on the product. Currently only Sweden has an exemption from the ban.<\/p>\n

Olaf said it had “unambiguous and converging circumstantial pieces of evidence” that Mr Dalli knew of the alleged bribery attempt by businessman Silvio Zammit.<\/p>\n

In his statement as a witness in the case Mr Barroso said: “I told Mr Dalli it would be better for him to resign on his own initiative, to clear his name.<\/p>\n

“If he did not follow that path, I told him that as president of the Commission, I would have to ask him to resign in keeping with Article 17 (6) of the Treaty.”<\/p>\n

He accused Mr Dalli of having had “strange contacts” with the tobacco industry “outside the Commission – many thousands of kilometres outside – without any officials being present”.<\/p>\n

wirestory<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{{The head of the European Commission has told the EU’s top court that the entire Commission’s reputation was at stake when a Maltese member of his team was found to have acted improperly.}} Jose Manuel Barroso was defending his treatment of ex-Health Commissioner John Dalli, who left his job in 2012. Mr Dalli had been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000053018,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-15320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-justice","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000053018,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15320.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15320.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15320.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15320.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15320.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15320.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000053018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15320"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=15320"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=15320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}