EU rules attacked as McCreevy joins bank

EU rules on forbidding former European commissioners from taking up jobs that may pose a conflict of interest have come in for fresh criticism after Charlie McCreevy joined the board of a unit of a US bank, Bank of New York Mellon.

The former finance minister agreed last year to give up a directorship in a London-based investor group, NBNK, planning to buy distressed banks, when the commission’s ethics group said it posed a conflict with his previous job in charge of the internal market.

Under the code of ethics, commissioners are asked to wait for 12 months before taking up such posts. Mr McCreevy’s latest directorship is understood to have been made in mid-February, almost exactly a year since he left Brussels.