Democratic accountability the winner in the EU crisis

This has been a week without precedent in European politics. Never before has a European Commission resigned en masse. In choosing to do so in the early hours of Tuesday morning by unanimous decision of the 20 Commissioners, the college restored a modicum of dignity and integrity to itself but rest assured if it did not go it would have been pushed. The resignation was a necessary and proportionate response to the devastating critique contained in the report of the committee of experts appointed by the European Parliament after its censure debate of January last.

Like all political stand-offs, this is one whose origins are wide and deep. In part the Santer Commission became a victim of its own willingness to expose fraud and corruption. In part it was a victim of the chaotic, under-managed and sometimes unmanaged growth of responsibilities during the Delors years. Ultimately, however, this Commission was the author of its own demise.

Last March the European Parliament refused to grant discharge to the Commission for the 1996 budget. This refusal was based on grave evidence of mismanagement and irregularities presented both by the European Court of Auditors and the Internal Audit division of the European Commission.

The Parliament set a December deadline for reconsidering the discharge question. In the interim tension grew between the two institutions as MEPs on the budget control committee perceived a reluctance and at times an arrogance on the part of the Commission or some of its officials in revealing to the Parliament, as a budget authority, what had gone on. Nonetheless much progress was made in trying to address the concerns raised.

Come December not too much attention was paid to the work of the Parliament but, reported or not, that work went on. In an extremely ill-advised move on the eve of the sensitive budget discharge vote the Commission provoked the Parliament with a demand to back them or sack them, a move supported by the largest political group in the House, the Socialists. This had the parliamentary effect of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and of propelling us inevitably towards a different and deeper debate which came in January.

The Socialists tabled a pseudo-motion of censure but said they planned to vote confidence in the Commission. To many of us in the Parliament, the unwillingness of the Commission simply to live with the consequences of a parliamentary vote was unacceptably arrogant.

My group, the Liberals, opted for a strategy that shifted the debate from the relatively narrow ground of the politics of accountancy to the much wider ground of the politics of accountability.

This was accompanied by a tactical toughness that insisted on individual political accountability and responsibility by naming names. We named two Commissioners, Ms Edith Cresson and Mr Manuel Marin.

Neither was chosen at random. The evidence available to us commended this choice. We invited both to attend a group meeting in Strasbourg. Marin impressed. Cresson provoked.

In the final analysis our resolution sought just Ms Cresson's resignation. We lost the vote but won the war in shifting the debate on to accountability. What followed was the appointment of the Committee of Independent Experts and yesterday's damning report.

In the punctuation of the politics of this affair, January was merely a comma, yesterday the full stop. We are in the process of creating a new, minimum and acceptable European norm for the management of public affairs in the Community institutions which does not permit cultural exceptional-ism. Hiring one's dentist to do work of dubious if any European value may be acceptable in some political cultures but will never again be allowed at the level of the European Commission.

More fundamentally, what has been established by the work of the Expert Committee is that individual Commissioner accountability does matter and will count in the future. Eventually the Treaty will need to be changed to recognise that there can be no executive responsibility without full public accountability. Anything less risks undermining the legitimacy of the Commission.

Equally it is clear that the Commission, its services, its senior management, its systems and its control mechanisms all need root-and-branch radical reform. The Commission has been too willing too often to say Yes and expose itself to difficulties as a result of gross under-resourcing. All the institutions must share a responsibility for this, especially the member-state governments, at the level of the Council, who frequently will the policy ends but not the budgetary means. There is a serious lesson here for the enlargement process.

At the end of the German presidency, the heads of government or state will have to nominate the Commission President for the new millennium.

We all need to learn the lesson of the last nomination. Jacques Santer was put in deliberately as safe if unspectacular. He is a decent skin but has lacked the mettle for the job in hand. In January, when his Commission was on the ropes, Santer's defence was pathetic. He soaked up punishment like a punch-bag but threw no punches of his own. I am certain the Parliament will not indulge the Council in any equivalent antics in future.

For the Parliament itself this entire debate has represented a coming of age, a new maturity in understanding its democratic rights and in its capacity to empower itself to act in the public interest.

From now on the Parliament will insist on a partnership of equality, not that we should be first among equals in terms of European institutions but that we should be an equal among equals.

The Santer Commission has lost its moral authority to govern and will have to go. By May the Parliament expects to have a new interim Commission in place and in the second half of the year there will be a new mandate to appoint the Commission for the new millennium. Meanwhile the Berlin Summit and Agenda 2000 can proceed unhindered.

It is a fantastic time to be involved in European politics and as leader of the Liberal Group I am proud that my group had the courage of its convictions and took a risk for democracy last January.

Pat Cox is President of the European Liberal Group and an Independent MEP for Munster.