Click:Prototype machining

Emily O’Reilly, the European ombudsman, has advised the European Commission to issue guidelines on public statements made by commissioners about ongoing investigations, following comments last year made by Joaquín Almunia, the then commissioner for competition, which she says gave an impression of bias.

The Commission accused several banks of acting as a cartel in fixing interest rate derivatives, a key global financial benchmark. Four of the banks settled with the Commission in 2013, paying fines totalling more than €1 billion. However, Crédit Agricole, JPMorgan and HSBC rejected the accusations, and the investigations into these three banks are still ongoing.

Crédit Agricole filed a complaint with the European ombudsman last year, accusing Almunia of making several statements between 2012 and 2014 that implied he had already made up his mind about the bank’s involvement in the cartel. In her report, published today (12 March), O’Reilly found that Almunia’s comments did indeed give the impression of bias.

Click Here: nrl shops

“The new Commission should acknowledge the maladministration that has occurred in this case under the previous Commission, apologise, and make sure that this does not happen again,” she said.

The Commission argued that the statements fulfilled the transparency obligations of the Commission to keep the public informed about an important case. Almunia left the Commission at the end of his mandate on 1 November 2014. The new commissioner for competition is Margrethe Vestager.

Ricardo Cardoso, the competition spokesperson for the Commission, said that Vestager will “carefully analyse the report and respond to it in due course”.

“Commissioner Vestager has made clear from the very start of her mandate that it is her policy not to comment on the substance of ongoing investigations,” he said.

O’Reilly has asked the Commission to reply to her report by the end of June.