Paul van Buitenen

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Paul van Buitenen

Paul van Buitenen (born May 28, 1957 in Breda ) is a former European civil servant who comes from the Netherlands . He became known as a whistleblower and later became a European politician.

Vocational training

From 1975 to 1979 Paul van Buitenen studied tool making at the Eindhoven University of Technology , but left the university without a diploma. Paul van Buitenen completed his military service in the Netherlands from 1979 to 1980. He then obtained a specialist degree in accounting in 1980. In 1983 he completed a professional training at the Netherlands Institute for Auditing (NIVRA).

Private occupation

The professional work began from 1980 to 1985 as an auditor assistant. From 1985 to 1986 he was head of the management of a production company. From 1986 to 1990 he was employed as a manager in the budget department at a university.

Activities as an EU official

In 1990, Paul van Buitenen found a job as an EU civil servant at the European Commission in Brussels, which he held until 2002. From 2002 he worked temporarily for a year as a financial management advisor for the police.

From 2003 he worked - again for a year - as an official in Brussels at the European Commission.

Personal merit

He publicly opposed the fraudulent behavior of some members of the Santer Commission , which subsequently had to resign as a whole. Van Buitenen was given a leave of absence and then placed in a "safe" position. He wrote a book about this case called Strijd voor Europa (German title Unbrechlich für Europa ). He then founded the Europe Transparant party . In the elections to the European Parliament on June 10, 2004 , it immediately won two seats.

prehistory

Van Buitenen first worked at DG 22, the directorate responsible for running programs (e.g. for vocational training). On January 1st, at his own request, he was transferred to DG 20, the financial control service for the other directorates. As a control officer, he and colleagues had gathered evidence, particularly about the Leonardo da Vinci BAT program and also about ECHO . This evidence was based in part on anonymous testimony. The material suggested direct or indirect involvement of interests in the allocation of Da Vinci funds to private companies to carry out portions of the program on a contract basis. There were provable irregularities in the allocation of funds.

He reported the results of his investigation to UCLAF , the anti-corruption service of the European Commission, but found that the latter did far too little with his report. However, his own service, DG 20, began an investigation into his former service, DG 22. The evaluation report confirmed that Van Buitenen was right. The further investigations focused exclusively on one of the shady Da Vinci projects, the service itself was not examined any further. Van Buitenen was no longer allowed to carry out control orders or to conduct surveys with colleagues. He wrote a note about the progress of the investigations with the affected services, cabinets and commissions and threatened to publish it with the European Parliament . He sent this report to his superiors, including the director of UCLAF.

On July 17, 1998 the investigation report of DG 20 appeared, in which the investigation results of Van Buitenen are confirmed. Nothing noticeable had happened to it by September 1st. Van Buitenen threatened again in writing that it would be published in Parliament. On October 28, he repeated his threat, but his general manager forbade him to do so. He was also no longer allowed to contact the independent European Court of Auditors . An anonymous letter had been sent to all Members of Parliament a few days earlier, according to Van Buitenen without his knowledge.

On 9 December 1998, shortly before the European Parliament was due to decide to continue the projects in which Van Buitenen had discovered fraud, he saw it as his duty to clarify the matter before the vote on the case.

Against the orders of his superiors, he sent 75 copies of a thick and well-documented report to the chairman of the Greens with a request to forward it to the budget control commission of parliament. The dossier dealt with the incompetent way in which the European Commission dealt with fraud in various expenditure dossiers and irregularities within the Commission, according to Van Buitenen. Commissioner Édith Cresson in particular came off very badly in this dossier .

Leave of absence

This act had serious professional consequences. He was excluded from the computer system and received the highest sanction: leave of absence. The reason given was that his statements had damaged the reputation of the office and that he had violated professional secrets. His wages were cut in half. An official investigation into his actions was initiated.

At the beginning, his report only caused some excitement in Parliament. Discharge for the Training Commission was refused for 1996. The Commission promised to improve the way it dealt with corruption. In early December she proposed to replace UCLAF with OLAF , which should work more independently.

It was only after January 4, 1999, when Van Buitenen made his leave of absence and the halving of his wages public, that the press pounced on the subject. Commissioners Édith Cresson and Manuel Marín came under the crossfire of criticism. The European Parliament called for the two Commissioners to resign. A motion of censure was tabled and some called for the two commissioners to be removed from office.

The commission accused Van Buitenen of lying and of being incompetent. The fraud allegations have long been investigated, some of them criminal. On March 15, 1999, a committee of experts brought a damning report to Parliament in which they fully confirmed Van Buitenen's investigations and the need for his report to Parliament. The evening after the publication of the committee's report, the committee resigned as a whole.

A proposal to protect informants by law was rejected by parliament. After the end of his leave of absence, Van Buitenen was transferred from the financial control service to the building service. The legal investigation was not stopped and he also experienced many restrictions in his new job.

consequences

Paul van Buitenen's discoveries led, among other things, to the establishment of the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) in June 1999 to investigate corruption and other irregularities within the EU authorities. Unlike before UCLAF, OLAF was given independence for its investigations in order to prevent interference.

Even after the crisis, Van Buitenen tried to uncover and address possible grievances. With the help of colleagues, he collected further material for a second dossier with new cases, which he presented to the new European Commission in 2001. Through the advocacy of some parliamentarians, he was given two months off for this task.

In 2000 the European Parliament adopted a regulation on whistleblowers . It stipulated that whistleblowers were allowed to pass on their research results to the chairman of one of the European institutions. In June 2006 the Committee on Budgetary Control in the European Parliament discussed an expert report that took stock of the new whistleblower regime.

On June 13, 2004, Van Buitenen described on Dutch television that he had become a leper as a result of the crisis and that his computer had been searched. For his family, too, the emotional burden was enormous. He would never have become a whistleblower if he had known the consequences beforehand.

Europe Transparant

On April 8, 2004, Paul van Buitenen announced the founding of a new political party called Europa Transparant . He wanted to better fight the grievances in the European institutions. In the Dutch elections to the European Parliament, he immediately won two seats after an election campaign that had cost no more than four thousand euros. He was immediately invited by other parties to take a seat in their parliamentary group, which Van Buitenen refused. Together with his party colleague Els de Groen , who wrote about corruption scandals in Eastern Europe, he seeks contact with like-minded people from other political groups.

In 2005, Hans Peter Martin , Paul van Buitenen and Ashley Mote decided to work together under the name Platform for Transparency (PfT).

Christian faith

Paul van Buitenen's family was Roman Catholic , in later years he converted to the Protestant denomination and first joined an Anglican church in Brussels . He then joined a charismatic church in Breda .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Buitenen, Paul van
BRIEF DESCRIPTION European official, scandal investigator and politician, MEP
DATE OF BIRTH May 28, 1957
PLACE OF BIRTH Breda