Santer backs Irish Commissioner's right to support Amsterdam Treaty

The President of the European Commission yesterday strongly defended the right of the Irish Commissioner, Mr Padraig Flynn, to speak in support of the Amsterdam Treaty. Commissioners were not to be seen as "political eunuchs", Mr Jacques Santer told journalists.

Mr Flynn has been threatened with legal action if he intervened again in the referendum campaign. He has rejected the threat and responded with further defiance yesterday, saying: "This is a good treaty from the social point of view, a citizens' treaty which greatly advances democracy. I feel obliged to say that and will not be muzzled."

Mr Santer added: "And that is the position of the Commission."

Later, however, the attack by opponents of the treaty on Mr Flynn's allegedly improper involvement in the campaign opened up on a new front with claims from Green MEPs that funding for the Irish European Movement was being used improperly to support the Yes case.

The claims were denied angrily by the body's chairman, Mr Alan Dukes TD, who said it was involved in an information campaign whose meetings "were open to those advocating a No vote". It had organised joint meetings with the Greens - if there was a problem with funding, why had the Greens suggested such meetings?

Ms Patricia McKenna MEP said at a press conference here that contrary to the legal requirement that EU funds could not be used for advocacy purposes, £150,000 allocated to the movement had been used to publish biased literature and billboards, as well as organising meetings around the State in support of the Treaty.

A spokeswoman for the movement acknowledged that booklets have been published but insisted these were purely informational. Billboards had been paid for separately by funds raised from members and corporate supporters. It had always sought to ensure that there were No advocates either on the platform or contributing from the floor at the 57 meetings it had organised this year.

A freephone service was also run, where staff were under "strict instructions" regarding advocacy.

Ms McKenna said the booklets were clearly a form of advocacy. Funding in this way of a group whose main function was to advocate closer EU integration was inappropriate. And the organisation of meetings at which the No case was simply articulated from the floor was inadequate to meeting its obligations of neutrality.

She said one pamphlet, European Common Foreign and Security Policy - Your Questions Answered, makes the case for what it describes as the "necessary" changes in the treaty. In response to the question: "Does involvement in Common Foreign and Security Policy affect Irish neutrality?" it answers with a categorical, although controversial, "No". "That is advocacy," she said.

Mr Dukes said its campaign "does not contain any element of advocacy" and that Ms McKenna would not be satisfied with published material unless it reflected her views. She had taken the same view of literature from the Referendum Commission. "Much of reality seems somewhat strange to her," he said.

Earlier Mr Santer, responding to journalists' questions, said the right to express political views applied to all Commissioners. "We have not lost our national origins in joining the Commission and cannot be seen as political eunuchs. If Commissioners are to be members of a politically-strong college [of Commissioners], they have to be able to express their views strongly."

Commission sources stress that while the Commission services are bound by the obligation not to intervene in national politics, the college of Commissioners is a political body and under no such constraints.