EU: Ireland's EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy stormed his way into the political spotlight yesterday with a scorching attack on the Prodi commission and on one of his current colleagues. Denis Staunton reports from Brussels
Mr McCreevy called an unscheduled press conference to assert his control over a key element in his Internal Market portfolio - a proposal to open up the European market in services. He denied that European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso had ordered him to make changes to the proposal, known as the services directive, and launched a scarcely disguised attack on his German colleague, Gunther Verheugen.
"President Barroso has not ordered any redrafting of this particular directive or ordered commissioners to do anything - A, B, C or D. There are people - not President Barroso - who like to speak out of both sides of their mouth on this issue. I don't particularly go along with that kind of thing," he said.
Mr Verheugen, who has led calls within the commission for changes to the services directive, was also a member of the Prodi commission, which proposed the directive at the beginning of 2004. During a commission meeting this week, Mr McCreevy reminded Mr Verheugen that the German commissioner had been present at the birth of the directive.
"Neither myself nor President Barroso had any hand, act or part in the preparation of this services directive. I know where I was in January 2004. I was minister for finance in Ireland, trying to run the Irish economy. And President Barroso was in Portugal as leader of the Portuguese people running the Portuguese economy. So it wasn't us that did it in the first place. This may be obvious to some people but not obvious to others," Mr McCreevy said yesterday.
Sources close to Mr Verheugen expressed surprise at the ferocity and openness of Mr McCreevy's attack, insisting that the two men agreed on the substance of the issue.
Experienced observers of the commission said they had never seen a commissioner criticising a colleague in such a public and robust manner. Mr McCreevy's performance represented a return to the form that made him such a distinctive figure in Dáil Éireann. It followed an initial three months in Brussels during which the commissioner appeared reluctant to assert himself.
Mr McCreevy said he was willing to address concerns about the services directive, which would allow service-providers to operate freely throughout the EU.
He said the controversial "country of origin" principle, which would allow companies to operate in any EU country according to the rules of their home country, could be amended to safeguard the rights of workers and to avoid creating uncertainty for businesses.
Health and publicly funded services of general interest would be exempt from the directive, and he promised he would ensure that the new rules would not lead to a decline in labour standards.