Spare a thought for poor Guenter Verheugen. The European Union’s industry commissioner has been out of the spotlight for months now, giving few press conferences and generally doing very little to create headlines, applause or criticism. Even his favourite policy issue - the unglamourous better regulation agenda - has been kept at a mercifully low profile recently.

The next thing you know, he’s being compared to Paul Wolfowitz.

Let me explain for the benefit of those outside the Brussels bubble. Mr Verheugen has a close relationship with his chef de cabinet, a lady called Petra Erler. The two of them have been photographed on holiday together (including in the nude on a Baltic beach. Don’t ask), and rumours about the precise nature of their friendship have been circulating for more than a year.

All of this, of course, would not be a problem here on the Continent, where we take such things with a Gallic shrug and merely wonder how Mr Verheugen squares things with his wife back in Germany.

However, the Brussels press corps felt it had a legitimate interest once Mr Verheugen decided to promote Ms Erler to her current position, a move that entailed a big rise in her salary and pension rights. At the very least, many felt that Mr Verheugen should declare what kind of relationship he has with Ms Erler: if the two of them were indeed lovers, the promotion could be seen as an act of nepotism.

At that point, in October last year, the commissioner published a carefully-worded statement saying the two had not been engaged in any relationship "going beyond friendship" at the time of the promotion, and that that was also the case now.

On Thursday a German society magazine published more recent photos, showing Mr Verheugen entering Ms Erler’s house in the evening, and leaving it (apparently in the same suit) the following morning. The publication sparked a storm of questions at the Commission’s daily press briefing, with some journalists drawing a parallel to the case of Paul Wolfowitz, who resigned from the his post as president of the World Bank last month after allegations that he advanced the career of his girl-friend.

The Commission, which, it has to be said, is neither very experienced nor especially good at dealing with "frivolous" stories, decided to give the identical to every question. Time and again, the spokespeople intoned that "everything that needed to be said about this has already been said". Mr Verheugen’s spokesman later added that the October statement - including the We-are-just-good-friends part - was still valid today.

So what should we make of this latest instalment? Well, for a start Mr Verheugen seems untroubled by the fact that his public statements sit oddly alongside the photos in BUNTE magazine on Thursday. And it is certainly true that photos of Mr Verheugen entering or leaving certain houses hardly offer conclusive proof of anything - least of all do they tell us anything about their relationship at the time of the promotion, the only period that really counts.

Mr Verheugen can presumably also rely on the fact that the Brussels press corps is by and large made up of decent people who have little interest in snooping around other people’s private lives. Though there is considerable irritation with the commissioner, especially among some German journalists, few will want to take their papers too far into the gutter in pursuit of Mr Verheugen’s love life.

In any case, Mr Verheugen has one key advantage over Mr Wolfowitz when it comes to defending his behaviour. For all his sins, the German commissioner had no hand in invading Iraq. Unless anyone comes up with a convincing theory linking Mr Verheugen to the neo-cons in the White House, his survival looks a certainty.

June 7th, 2007 in EU commissioners | Permalink