Court-ing trouble?

As the European Parliament approaches the mid-point of its five-year term, all kinds of deals to share plum posts are in the offing.
It looks as if Austrian Socialist MEP Herbert Bösch, the scourge of Herman Brüner, the head of the EU's anti-fraud office OLAF, will take over as chairman of the budgetary control committee, replacing Hungarian Socialist Szabolcs Fazakas.
Bösch has just produced a report for the committee on strengthening the work of the committee, which was discussed at a workshop last week (21 November).
One of the ideas put forward at the workshop by Maarten Engwirda, Dutch member of the European Court of Auditors, was that staff from the court would be seconded to work with the committee – a curious idea, which should reduce the chances of the MEPs being too critical of the court. MEPs are less likely to favour Engwirda's suggestion that the court should be allowed to “go public” with its reports as it sees fit – rather than have to submit them first to the committee.