José Manuel Barroso didn’t break ethics rules: committee

The appointment of former European Commission President José Manuel Barroso at Goldman Sachs International did not break EU ethics rules, according to the Commission’s ad hoc ethics committee.

In an opinion published in late October and now posted on the Commission website, the committee — which is composed of former EU officials — said it did not find “sufficient grounds to establish a violation of the duty of integrity and discretion.”

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In July, after the Brexit vote, Barroso was appointed as a non-executive chairman of the U.S. investment bank. But his appointment prompted some MEPs and transparency campaigners to call on the Commission to launch legal action to cut his EU pension.

The campaigners argued that Barroso was not respecting the pledge for former commissioners not to use their experience at the Commission for lobbying purposes. In September, his successor as the Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, asked the ethical committee to file an opinion on Barroso’s appointment.

The committee said Barroso respected the code of conduct for commissioners, which includes an 18-month cooling off period before taking lobbying jobs after leaving the Commission.

However, according the opinion, Barroso “should have been aware and appraised that by doing so he would give rise to criticism and risk to cause reputational damage to the Commission and the Union more generally.”

It is now up to the College of Commissioners to decide whether to launch legal action against Barroso.

Transparency campaigners voiced their frustration at the recommendations. “It looks like the current recommendation was formed without interviewing Barroso, and the committee has simply accepted his statement that he won’t lobby for Goldman Sachs without even probing what is meant by ‘lobbying,’” said Vicky Cann, a campaigner at Corporate Europe Observatory.