BRUSSELS - An MEP tasked with looking at how EU money is spent in the bloc's 24 independent agencies has caused a stir with her preliminary findings on conflicts of interest and questions about whether the agencies are useful.

...They were all established because member states decided so - most of them in the past ten years. Apart from checking how they manage their accounts, Romanian MEP Monica Macovei - a former justice minister and anti-corruption campaigner - says the very existence of some of these agencies should be questioned when they only produce reports.

...Four of the agencies - dealing with food safety, aviation safety, chemicals registration and medicines registration - are also on her radar due as they have staff recruited directly from industry.

With agencies claiming that experts outside the industry are hard to find, Macovei during a heated debate earlier on Wednesday insisted that this is no excuse for potentially endangering public health. If someone has worked for a company, they should not be allowed to certify the products of that company, says the deputy.