THE EUROPEAN Parliament committee which rejected the nomination of Department of Finance secretary general Kevin Cardiff to the EU’s audit body has decided not to review its decision.
However, the chairman of the budgetary control committee expects that the entire membership of the European Parliament will be asked next month to vote on a proposal to send the nomination back to the committee for further consideration.
While the Government continues to promote Mr Cardiff for the post, the issue is likely to remain unresolved until the parliament next meets in plenary session in mid-December.
“Certain people might ask for some additional information on Mr Cardiff but I am not sure,” said Dutch liberal MEP Jan Mulder, who chairs the committee.
Asked who might propose a vote of the parliament to send the nomination back to the committee, he said MEPs within or outside the committee might take that step. “I am not sure. We have to see how it develops.”
The committee’s narrow vote against Mr Cardiff last week was criticised after it emerged that Ireland’s outgoing member of the court, Eoin O’Shea, sent emails criticising his nomination to leading members of the committee.
“We took note of the commotion,” Mr Mulder said. While members of the committee would have loved to have heard about Mr O’Shea’s intervention, he said it was impossible to know whether the outcome would have been any different if they did.
“We are all in politics and these things happen. There is nothing new. In every country, in every party, you have sometimes happening this kind of thing. Human nature is what it is.”
If the next plenary session votes against sending the matter back to the committee, the plenary session would then vote on the committee’s original recommendation against Mr Cardiff’s nomination.
The committee’s recommendation is not binding but the parliament has never overturned its recommendation on any other candidate to join the court. While the vote of the wider parliament is not binding, Mr Cardiff said in a questionnaire to the committee that he would withdraw his nomination in the event of a negative vote.
Separately, Labour TD Joe Costello said he sent a second set of copies of documents on the affair to Mr Mulder. Mr Costello chairs the Oireachtas Joint Committee on EU Affairs, where Mr O’Shea’s emails were disclosed.
A copy of the email and a transcript of the committee’s meeting were sent to Mr Mulder last week. When Mr Costello heard yesterday that the Dutch MEP had not received them he phoned him and sent further copies.