Juncker’s chief of staff has form in leaving his mark on official European Commission documents.
This week it transpired Martin Selmayr had redacted submissions by candidate trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström to the European Parliament. A bad misquote he added (mistakenly, we presume?), put Malmström in an uncomfortable position before MEPs (see the FT’s write-up complete with leaked doc).
Dutch MEP Marietje Schaake revealed that her version of the document showed the Selmayr edits by clicking on ‘track changes.’
This rang a distant, gin-fogged bell.
And indeed, on checking ones archives, a Wirtschaftswoche article in September 2007 (now no longer, if ever, online, sadly), revealed that when Selmayr was spokesman for then telecom commissioner Vivian Reding:
“When the first draft for a European regulatory authority was doing the rounds as a word document, lobbyists were surprised to discover that Selmayr had been the most recent to work on the file.”
“A right-click on the mouse brought it all to light.”
Time for a Microsoft Office refresher course?
BM
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