EU Debates Sacking Top Officials

The European Union’s parliament debated Monday whether to unseat the top officials of the group’s executive agency amid reports of fraud and financial mismanagement.

All 20 officials of the European Commission who would lose their jobs attended the debate in the 626-member assembly, which has scheduled a no-confidence vote Thursday.

Pauline Green, leader of the parliament’s Socialist faction, urged members not to let the crisis of the past months drag on, noting the assembly’s heavy workload, which includes institutional reforms to be carried out ahead of the European Union’s enlargement.

Green has said her group probably will not vote to censure the commission, making it unlikely that the motion to unseat its members will get the two-thirds majority needed to take effect.

But the Socialist group, the largest faction in the parliament, said it wants guarantees that the commission will overhaul its operations in return for Socialist support in the vote.

The executive body of the 15-member European Union has been tarnished in recent months by allegations of fraud and mismanagement, particularly in its spending on humanitarian aid and research.

Commission President Jacques Santer assured the deputies that he had already taken steps to “restore sound management” and promote greater transparency in the executive body.

“I treat the taxpayers’ money with utmost respect,” Santer said. “Anyone found guilty of fraud must be punished.”

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, meeting earlier with Santer in Bonn, said an anticorruption team should be set up to investigate the allegations.

“The commission should not become an object of scorn,” Schroeder said.

Manuel Marin, the commission’s vice president, has come under scrutiny because of his responsibility for the union’s humanitarian aid office at the time of the alleged fraud.

The union’s research commissioner, Edith Cresson--a former French prime minister--also has come under suspicion.

Both commissioners defended themselves during Monday’s debate.

“In the 14 years I’ve been in this commission, I’ve done some good things, and probably some bad things too. But I cannot accept that I’ve covered up for fraud,” Marin said.

Several delegates spoke Monday in favor of censuring individual commissioners rather than the whole commission. They did not name specific commissioners.

However, the union’s rules do not allow parliamentary censure motions against individual commissioners.

Wilfried Martens, the leader of the European People’s Party, the assembly’s second-largest faction, argued that the censure motion was being “used to protect certain commissioners.” He warned that a vote against the whole commission would be “disastrous.”