The European Space Agency's first Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV)
will begin its programme's four-month long qualification process in
April, which will help to answer NASA's questions about International
Space Station (ISS) safety and the potential for commercial ATV cargo
supply.

Well, I'm not sure exactly where this is coming from, but it seems
that Congress set up a committee in 2005:

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=23486

That such committees recommend more reviews and tests is a pretty much
universal tendency. There doesn't seem to be a lot of reason to
suspect they are picking on ATV in particular (at least, not based on
a quick glance).

There's also some information at:
https://onemis.nasa.gov/iss_safety/
including biographies of the participants (short summary: mostly
career NASA people).