McCreevy accused of stalling legal action until after election

COMMISSIONER Charlie McCreevy and the European Commission has been accused of stalling EU legal action against Ireland until after the elections to avoid embarrassing Fianna Fáil.

The Government has failed to bring two pieces of legislation on banking into national law and was issued with two formal warnings last year.

But no action has been taken since, although Internal Market Commissioner McCreevy said this week that he was “considering further steps that might be taken in this case”.

Dublin Labour MEP Proinsias De Rossa says that Mr McCreevy, who is responsible for both proceedings, has put any action on hold during the current election campaign.

“How is it that the commission would feel it necessary to send two formal warnings to the Government in the five months between July and December 2008 on 2006 Statutory Audit directive yet has taken no action since, despite the fact that the directive still hasn’t been transposed?” asked Mr De Rossa.

He said that from his experience, issuing two warnings about such an issue in the immediate months after the deadline passes is quite rare and only occurs on the most important directives. “Doing nothing after that however is even rarer,” he said.

The second case is the 2006 Company Accounts directive that obliges EU-listed companies to provide annual corporate governance statements and greater disclosure of off-balance sheet arrangements and unusual transactions involving board members and spouses.

This directive should have been brought into Irish law by last September and Mr McCreevy said a first warning had been issued last December.

“Given all that has emerged over the past six months about the non-regulation of banks in Ireland it seems to me that Commissioner McCreevy is taking a very irresponsible approach to these issues,” said Mr De Rossa.

Mr McCreevy said the Irish authorities in January said that many of the fundamental elements of the directive were already in place and that they were at an advanced stage in fully transposing the directive.

However Mr De Rossa said that according to the commission’s most recent scoreboard published on May 1 this year on the implementation of this directive, Ireland together with Luxembourg has to transpose more than 31 of the 55 articles. “This undermines the Government’s claim that they have many of the fundamental elements already in place.”