The European Commission official in charge of budgets and administration has dismissed any comparisons between gaps in the EU executive's accounting systems and the scandals at Enron and WorldCom.
The Commission has been embroiled in a row over its accounts after it removed its former chief accountant after she said there were huge failures in the system of checks, which meant the EU could not keep track of its near 100 billion euro budget.
European Commission Vice-President Neil Kinnock said that the Commission had been working openly to solve its accounting problems and was under annual investigation by parliament and auditors.
"All that is the absolute opposite of what happened in the United States," he told a sometimes bad tempered meeting of the budgets committee of the European Parliament after one of its members raised the comparison with Enron and WorldCom.
Kinnock has come under increased pressure over the case of former top Commission accountant Marta Andreasen, who says she was dismissed for going public with concerns about failures in the Commission's accounting systems.
The Commission says it knew about the problems and was taking steps to remedy them and that Andreassan broke internal confidentiality rules.
Kinnock was put in charge of reforming the Commission after the previous EU executive was forced to resign in 1999 in the wake of allegations of nepotism and weak internal controls.
Kinnock told the parliamentary committee that the Commission had been open about its problems with its accounting system from the very beginning, in contrast to the cases of Enron and WorldCom.
"The representation of the European Commission as uniquely repressive and over-sensitive...is a thorough misrepresentation," Kinnock said.