MyFT – track the topics most important to you, FT Weekend – full access to the weekend content, Mobile & Tablet Apps – download to read on the go, Gift Article – share up to 10 articles a month with family, friends and colleagues. No company, however, has been under as much scrutiny by lawmakers as global consultancy Accenture. Ursula von der Leyen bei Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Eager to reform the apparatus, von der Leyen — a longtime ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel who had already spent eight years leading two other ministries — discharged the official who oversaw procurement and announced that external advisers would now be involved in overseeing significant projects. Much attention has focused on the role of Timo Noetzel, a managing director at Accenture and a friend of Suder. Her father Ernst Albrecht worked as one of the first European civil servants from the establishment of the European Commission in 1958, first as chef de cabinet to the European commissioner for competition Hans von der Groeben in the Hallstein Commission, and then as director-general of the Directorate-General for Competi… An internal investigation, which began after the auditors’ reports were leaked and was overseen by the ministry’s legal chief Andreas Conradi, was “superficial, full of gaps, contradictory and not sufficient to tackle problems of this scale,” two SPD members of the investigative committee wrote to von der Leyen in a letter dated June 21, 2019, seen by POLITICO. In the summer of 2014, von der Leyen announced that Katrin Suder, a successful business consultant, would join the ministry in the powerful position of armaments state secretary, overseeing billions of euros in procurement spending and reporting directly to the minister. The auditors’ main criticism wasn’t that the ministry paid for outside expertise — which security experts say is needed, particularly when it comes to applying new digital technologies. The Berlaymont building, EUropean Commission headquarters in Brussels | Mark Renders/Getty Images. And Suder wasn’t Noetzel’s only personal contact at the ministry. The idea behind bringing in Suder — a physicist with a doctorate in computational neuroscience who had spent 14 years climbing the ranks at McKinsey — was to make processes more efficient and to have someone with high-level corporate experience who could go toe-to-toe with arms industry executives. Latest news, analysis and comment from POLITICO’s editors and guest writers on French politics. The committee’s next job will be to find out how much von der Leyen knew about possible misconduct by officials working under her | Tobias Schwarz/AFP via Getty Images. “We’re in the middle of digitalizing a major organization of a quarter million people,” she said, stressing that “to manage such a task, you need the outside view of things” and that every German government ministry uses external consultants. Latest news, analysis and comment on elections in Europe and beyond. “We will have to look at the question of why the internal investigation of the ministry was so sloppy, and if that was intentional, which I suspect it was, then whether the aim was to produce an investigative report that would somehow calm down parliament but ideally not reveal anything,” said Lindner of the Greens. Footage showed Von der Leyen gesture in … Latest news, analysis and comment from POLITICO’s editors and guest writers in Europe. The auditors’ main criticism wasn’t that the ministry paid for outside expertise. Rather, it was about the way contracts were awarded. It may even include waiving intellectual property rights from vaccine producers and seizing production altogether. The first time the public heard about the scandal was in the fall of 2018, when internal reports by Germany’s Federal Audit Office were leaked to the media. Rather, it was about the way contracts were awarded. Von der Leyen takes swipe at UK over ‘transparency’ and says AstraZeneca must ‘catch up’ on vaccines to EU. Von der Leyen was eventually offered a seat on a nearby sofa, opposite Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, who occupies a lower-status rank in diplomatic protocol. He has previously expressed a markedly different view from members of other parties on the ministry’s efforts to get to the bottom of the affair, offering praise for “thorough and comprehensive” cooperation with parliament. German MEP Sergey Lagodinsky wrote of von der Leyen's utterance that "'Ehm' is the new term for 'that's not how EU-Turkey relationship should be'." Latest news, analysis and comment on migration in Europe and beyond. Auf Facebook kursiert ein Bild von Ursula von der Leyen mit der Behauptung, sie habe die europäischen Arbeitnehmer aufgerufen, auf den Lohn zu verzichten, um die durch die Corona-Krise geschwächte Wirtschaft zu unterstützen. Von der Leyen, as president of the European Commission, is head of the EU executive. Although there is no suggestion that von der Leyen herself was part of this network, the increased use of external consultants has been a hallmark of her tenure as defense minister. Access our pick of the most crucial global news, comment and analysis of the moment, updated three times a day. But others have put forward a less innocent explanation — that some consultants had privileged access to ministry officials that helped them circumvent rules and win contracts worth millions of euros. Twice Weekly. Within four years of von der Leyen taking over at the ministry, Accenture’s earnings from work with Germany’s armed forces rose from €459,000 in 2014 to around €20 million in 2018, according to Spiegel magazine. Es sei inakzeptabel, dass Mitarbeiter längerfristig für dieselbe Arbeit weniger Lohn erhalten. 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Lawmakers will continue to subpoena and question key witnesses until the end of the year, including von der Leyen and her former undersecretary Suder, who resigned from her post last year. “All of this, if you ask me, was a crude attempt to distract from misconduct and cover up for people among the leadership,” Rohde added. The watchdog, which monitors German government cashflows, described dozens of irregularities in the hiring of external consultants by von der Leyen's defense ministry. But after some high-ranking officials refused to talk to parliamentarians, opposition lawmakers joined together in December to force the establishment of the investigative committee that would allow them to subpoena witnesses. Von Der Leyen Threatens to Block AstraZeneca Exports to UK Until Firm Makes Good on Deliveries to EU Sputnik 19:06 26-Mar-21 EU Backs Off Sparking Vaccine War Voice of America 16:36 26-Mar-21 Media freedom broached in von der Leyen-Janša virtual meeting STA 12:55 26-Mar-21 Von der Leyen tried to sound a hopeful longer-term note on EU vaccine supplies, raising the target for the 450m-population bloc for the second quarter of the year from 300m doses to 360m. Von der Leyen is the only minister to have been in Angela Merkel's cabinet since she took office in 2005, first as Minister of Family Affairs and Youth from 2005 to 2009, then as Minister of Labour and Social Affairs from 2009 to 2013, before becoming Minister of Defence in 2013. EU-Kommissionspräsidentin von der Leyen und EU-Ratspräsident Michel sind bei ihrem Ankara-Besuch auf Entspannung aus. Here’s the lowdown on what’s become known as the Berateraffäre (consultant scandal): The first time the public heard about the scandal was in the fall of 2018, when internal reports by Germany’s Federal Audit Office were leaked to the media. Moral Money – Your trusted source for news and analysis about socially responsible business, sustainable finance and ESG trends. Criticism of the ministry over the scandal has come from multiple opposition parties and the SPD, the junior partner in Germany’s coalition government. Von der Leyen was born in 1958 in Ixelles, Brussels, Belgium, where she lived until she was 13 years old. Energy Source – From scoops on Saudi Aramco to punchy columns on Opec, Energy Source delivers the FT's best in class energy journalism, forward-thinking analysis and insider intelligence twice a week. Von der Leyen was in Ankara with European Council President Charles Michel, to speak to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In July 2019 she became the first woman to be elected president of the European Commission. “Not ruling out anything” includes, according to von der Leyen, potentially blocking vaccine exports to countries who don’t share their vaccines. But not … Analyzing 56 out of 375 contracts awarded to consultants during the years 2015 and 2016, the Federal Audit Office found that in the vast majority of cases, the defense ministry did not provide sufficient justification for deciding that external advice was needed; in more than a third of the cases, procedures did not follow the normal rules for awarding contracts. Forging unity within the European Union is rarely easy for a president of the European commission but Ursula von der Leyen managed at least to bring two … Dutch prime minister hints at deal by Saturday to end vaccine exports row. “What happened in the past in the defense ministry under her leadership happened — and we will get to the bottom of that.”. Ursula von der Leyen refused to sign a plea from more than 20 world leaders calling for a new global treaty on pandemic preparedness, it was claimed today. Last November, she told the German parliament there had been “mistakes” in how external consultants were hired and said “this never should have happened.” But she defended the use of such consultants, saying they had been required to undertake a huge overhaul of the ministry. Bühler has said that his personal connection to Noetzel played no role in his professional decisions. Turkish President Erdogan HUMILIATES EU chief Ursula von der Leyen Pathetic 60 Minutes busted trying to smear Florida Gov. 10 1958 Ixelles/Elsene, Belgien „We must not rebuild economy of yesterday“ But some members of the investigative committee say they are convinced such and similar “buddy networks” helped Accenture and other consultancies land contracts.