the Slovak EU Council Presidency (source: Jozef Jakubčo)
The Antimonopoly Office (PMÚ) halted the investigation of competitions for some events organised in connection with Slovakia’s Presidency of the EU Council, which took place during the second half of 2016.
“This means that the office did not find any violation of the law on the protection of economic competition when scrutinising the available documents and information,” the Foreign Affairs Ministry wrote on its Facebook profile.
The decision disproves the claims of “suspicious orders” and allegedly non-transparent competitions for events linked to the presidency, the ministry said.
The Foreign Affairs Ministry was referring to the statements of former employee Zuzana Hlávková and two of her former colleagues, who had reported on overpriced orders and fictitious tender linked to the EU Council presidency.
The ethics watchdog Transparency International Slovensko (TIS) meanwhile responded that the PMÚ has not scrutinised the orders in depth.
It also pointed to the fact that the ministry is refusing to publish all the documents concerned with the competition to choose the organiser of the cultural events linked to the EU Council presidency. The ministry had even refused to give all necessary documents to the PMÚ. Although it eventually received the papers, the names of the companies that allegedly “competed” with the winner of the order to prepare the ceremonial introduction of the presidency’s logo, the agency Evka, were concealed, TIS informed.
“Can we even believe that the Foreign Affairs Ministry gave complete documents to the PMÚ when the office had to repeatedly ask for a complete set of the materials to be scrutinised?” TIS asked.
The whistleblowers who pointed to the dubious competitions meanwhile persist with their claims that the winners were chosen in advance and the competition was only for effect.
