Any acts of hospitality, such as Mandelson's stay on the Queen K yacht owned by the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, are not declared. Inexplicably, under the commissioners' code of conduct, we have no right to know who entertains them.
And guess who drew up this extraordinary code? No, not Mandelson, but his old boss, the Welsh windbag himself, Lord Kinnock. The code was Kinnock's considered response when the European Commission was plunged into yet another corruption scandal under Jacques Santer in 1999.
It's true: holidays, stays on yachts, meals in expensive restaurants.....these simply don't have to be declared by EU Commissioners.
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