McCreevy under fire for swapping work for horses

EU INTERNAL Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy is fighting off criticism of his spending four days at Cheltenham races rather than attending to business in Brussels.

The former Finance Minister said he has been going to Cheltenham for well over 30 years and does not intend to change that.

Other commissioners go skiing, but he likes to go to the horse races, he insisted when questioned over his missing the weekly commission meeting.

His spokesman insisted that Mr McCreevy was entitled to take holidays whenever he wanted to.

“It is a very important week for him and he intends to go there until the end of his life and that is what I am happy to convey to you,” his spokesman, Oliver Drewes, said in answer to journalists’ queries yesterday.

The Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso, has also been drawn into the controversy.

His spokesman, Johannas Laitenberger, when asked if it was acceptable for commissioners to miss meetings said that it was when the commissioner had a compelling professional or personal reason to do so.

Asked if a holiday was a sufficient personal reason for Mr McCreevy to miss his weekly meeting with his fellow commissioners, Mr Laitenberger said it was not up to him to check whether a commissioner is on holiday or not.

“We do not discuss the private arrangements including holidays of commissioners,” he said when questioned by journalists in Brussels yesterday.

Mr McCreevy has occasionally come in for criticism for spending a lot of time away from Brussels including long weekends in Ireland.

Cheltenham race week is a standing engagement in his calendar although he was forced to miss the first day of the event during his first year as commissioner.

A long-term punter, Mr McCreevy has responsibility for gambling in the EU and last week before he left for Cheltenham he agreed to take legal action against six countries that operate lotteries.

The governments of Germany, Finland, Sweden, Italy, Holland and Hungary claim that by limiting betting to national lotteries they can control gambling abuse by minors and by money launderers.

But the European Court of Justice has ruled that while social concern may be a legitimate reason for countries to ban gambling, it is not when they operate gambling themselves through a national lottery.