MEMBERS OF the European Court of Auditors, the EU’s audit watchdog, are appointed for a term of six years by the European Council, the heads of state, acting unanimously. The council is required to “consult” the European Parliament though not to accept its advice. And so the insistence by the Government yesterday that secretary general of the Department of Finance Kevin Cardiff remains its candidate for the court is as much an assertion of its rights and those of member states as a vote of confidence in Cardiff.
For some years, on a range of appointments on which MEPs must be consulted, they have leveraged that right into an effective veto by asking candidates if they intend to accept the verdict of parliament. A reply in the negative is unlikely to assist a positive recommendation. Hence Cardiff’s willing “Yes”.
His nomination has become highly politicised, a lightning rod for a series of converging agendas, some of which had little to do with a widely acknowledged capacity for the job – MEPs’ determination to assert themselves, the desire to kick at anything linked to the bank guarantee, and the Government’s related cynical use of the posting to move on someone too closely associated with it. And the thwarted desire of incumbent Eoin O’Shea to be renominated. The latter’s unprecedented e-mail campaign reflected particularly poor judgment.
But Cardiff’s rejection by the budget committee by one vote - 12 to 11, with one abstention – is a serious embarassment to the Government. Its political credibility and judgment have taken a hammering. It will undoubtedly have to burn more badly needed political capital with friends in the European People’s Party and the Socialists, to which its members are allied, if it is to salvage Cardiff’s position when the issue comes before the full parliament. Whether it can succeed now is unclear, and if it is worth the candle, highly debatable. The Government might have done better to call it a day.
There is a particular irony, however, in the committee’s decision to block the appointment. It has in the past sought to dissuade member states from appointing to the court former politicians instead of accountants and experts on financial control, as Ireland has since 1986 been wont to do – Ritchie Ryan was followed out to Luxembourg by Barry Desmond and Máire Geoghegan-Quinn. (Her temporary replacement, O’Shea, although an accountant, was a Fianna Fáil activist). As Minister for Finance Michael Noonan has pointed out, “Of all the people that were nominated ... by Irish governments over the years, Kevin Cardiff is the most qualified technically for the job.”
Cardiff’s CV is undoubtedly flawed. He certainly has questions to answer, and a share of blame to take over a range of issues, from the bank guarantee to the bailout, to the supervision of banking, to the double accounting for the €3.6 billion, to the culture of the Department of Finance. Yet it is also true that his engagement at the coalface of all these issues is precisely part of his qualification for the job for which he has been nominated and in which he may still be usefully able to serve.