Revolving doors spin at tangent

I congratulate you on the special report on lobbying (30 August-5 September). The only exception is the article ‘Slowing down revolving doors'.
Officials leaving the European Commission are aware of their obligations under the staff regulations and the Commission reminds staff of those rules in accordance with its first internal control standard; in certain sensitive directorate-generals, specific rules exist.
For the cases mentioned in the article, the rules have been strictly followed and where the authorisation has been given, it has often been linked with clear restrictive conditions such as the prohibition to use factual information acquired during the activity in the Commission in specific files, a clear commitment not to deal with any file the person would have dealt with in his former activity and not to participate in any professional meeting with his former Commission colleagues during a certain period of time (or a ‘cooling off' period).
MEP Monica Frassoni also incorrectly states that the European Transparency Initiative (ETI) does not address “revolving doors”. The Commission has launched, as part of the ETI, an independent comparative study of this and other ‘ethics'-related administrative practices in the 27 member states and six EU institutions, including the Commission and the European Parliament. When this study is delivered and published in November, you may find that the Commission is not the first place to worry about conflicts of interest.

Valérie Rampi
European Commission spokeswoman for administration, audit and fight against fraud
Brussels