Ex-EC President Barroso blasts EU watchdog over probe of Goldman Sachs role

Former European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso denied on Thursday he had lobbied ex-colleagues for his new employer Goldman Sachs. He hit back at what he has called a personal “political attack” by the EU’s ethics watchdog, Reuters reports. “I have not and will not lobby EU officials,” he tweeted after a European Ombudsman’s report said his successor at the commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, had failed to properly scrutinize whether Barroso’s new job undermined fragile public trust in the EU. Barroso ran into furious criticism, including from Juncker, when he joined the US bank in July 2016, less than two years after leaving an EU executive. Barroso said Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly made no “legal assessment” of his duties for the bank.