Buitenen giving up on the EU

The Brussels office for whistle-blower MEP Paul Van Buitenen has told Accountancy Age that the Dutchman will not be standing for a second term of office on the European Parliament in June.

Van Buitenen is a former winner of the Accountancy Age Personality of the Year Award (1999) and one of the most accountancy-literate lawmakers the EP possesses. He has a bookkeeping diploma and, before politics, was assistant auditor in the European Commission’s financial control directorate. He has been a member of the parliament’s budgetary control committee and his whistle-blowing brought down the Jacques Santer commission.

The admission follows reports in the Amsterdam Telegraaf and Netherlands television that Van Buitenen was not planning to renew his electoral mandate. A formal statement from the MEP has been promised but is still awaited.

Before making his decision, he said earlier this year in an interview he was mulling over his decision: 'If I don’t try for re-election,' he said on that occasion, 'it will mean my opponents have won.'

On the Dutch television programme KRO Reporter aired on Sunday, Van Buitenen noted during his time as an MEP from 2004-2009, he had 'revealed a lot of irregularities within the EU institutions but none of these findings have lead to further investigation by the EU anti-fraud office OLAF and the relevant judicial authorities'.

A briefing note from the programme said: 'Instead of initiating a serious investigation, the European Commission, the European Parliament, and OLAF choose to look away. Under these circumstances, Paul van Buitenen sees no ground for re-election.'