The European Parliament’s Budgetary Control Committee yesterday slammed Commission president José Manuel Barroso’s refusal to grant MEPs access to the OLAF report that led to the forced resignation of Commissioner John Dalli.

They also insisted the Commission should reverse its decision.

According to Michael Theurer, the German MEP who heads the committee, Mr Barroso’s response is “unacceptable”.

“It is Parliament’s duty to control the actions of the Commission. In such circumstances, it is not possible to conduct a democratic check of decisions,” Mr Theurer said.

“The rules may need to be reviewed so that any case of this kind would be communicated immediately to the presidents of the Commission and Parliament at the same time as the judicial authorities.”

Despite the pressure on the Commission and OLAF to give “appropriate access” to MEPs, even if this is done under confidentiality rules, both the EU executive and its anti-fraud agency refused.

Instead, they said that since the report was passed onto the Maltese authorities to investigate, it was solely up to Malta to decide whether the report should be made public.

Following an assessment by the office of Malta’s Attorney General, the report has been passed on to the police for further investigation.

Earlier this week, both Mr Dalli and Silvio Zammit, a former canvasser, were interrogated for several hours at police HQ in Floriana.

Mr Dalli was forced to resign last month following an OLAF investigation which concluded there was “unambiguous circumstantial evidence” showing Mr Dalli was aware Mr Zammit had asked for a substantial sum of money from a Swedish tobacco producer to bring about changes to the EU’s tobacco directive.

The investigation started following a report filed by Swedish Match, a manufacturer of a smokeless tobacco product known as snus which is banned in all EU countries except Sweden.

Both Mr Dalli and Mr Zammit deny the allegations.

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