Although the year is less than three months old, for the European Commission 1999 has without doubt already become its annus horribilis, to use an expression employed by Britain's Queen Elizabeth in a different context.
The mass resignation of all 20 members of the Commission, following an excoriating report on fraud, nepotism and financial mismanagement in its ranks, is a body blow to the linchpin organisation of the entire European Union.
But, paradoxically, the Commission may emerge stronger as a result of the root-and-branch reform both of its structure and its management culture which has now become inevitable.
The crisis which burst in Brussels in the early hours of yesterday morning was a long time coming. Had the Commission and its President, Jacques Santer, acted last year - when the cumulative evidence of significant loss of financial management control over some of the big aid programmes had become overwhelming - the final, humiliating denouement of resignation might have been avoided. But by fatally delaying, the Commission President in effect handed his own head and those of his colleagues on a plate to European Parliament members facing elections in June and determined to show their democratic mettle.
The report of the so-called "wise men" in Brussels on Monday night only delivered the final death sentence. It was researched and written after a necessarily brief examination of all the evidence of incompetence and wrongdoing which had already been amassed by the EU Court of Audit, by the European Parliament and by the Commission's internal anti-fraud unit.
Inevitably the report is, to an extent, an exercise in rough justice. The "wise men" rightly point the finger not only at the occasional outright cases of fraud, and one open-and-shut case of "favouritism" in the awarding of contracts (Edith Cresson) but more generally at a loss of effective management control. That said, they went too far in claiming, "It is difficult to find anyone who has even the slightest sense of responsibility."
It is important to see the damning indictment of the Commission in context. Criminal fraud exists in all public administrations and is no worse in the Commission than in national or local government. More than 80 per cent of all fraud affecting EU spending occurs directly under the responsibility of national governments, not the European Commission. Favouritism and croneyism exist in some parts of the Commission but are noticeably absent in many others. Many departments of the Commission are run efficiently and with no allegations of financial impropriety.
It is equally important to see just where the problems that have emerged have their origins. As the report of the "wise men" makes clear, most cases of loss of financial control and waste have occurred in aid programmes set up by the EU in the years after the collapse of the Iron Curtain. At that time the Commission was told to undertake the management of very large spending programmes while at the same time being denied the human resources and the management expertise to run them.
With hindsight, perhaps, the Commission should have refused to take responsibility for some of these programmes until they were given the staff they needed. Certainly the Commission should have challenged the so-called "austerity budget" approach adopted by the Council of Ministers which set objectives with little or no assessment of the means needed to achieve those objectives.
It has to be added that as the Commission moved from being a mainly policy-focused organisation to one primarily concerned with implementation, it found many of its otherwise high-quality civil servants unsuited to the new tasks.
The resignation crisis lends even greater urgency to the radical reorganisation of the Commission which has already begun in anticipation of the changes which the next Commission President will certainly want to introduce when he (and it probably is a he) takes office next January.
This reorganisation must confront the current management culture in the Commission, root out any residual elements of internal clientele-ism, reduce the all too often overbearing but negative role of the commissioners' cabinets (their personal political staffs), strengthen the standing of the full-time civil service and introduce modern financial management expertise.
All of this will only work in the context of far-reaching political reform of the Commission. The number of commissioners needs streamlining as the EU embarks on an enlargement perhaps to 30 or more member-states.
A smaller number of senior commissioners must be given overall charge of major policy areas including external affairs, internal management and communications strategy. Above all the new president must exploit the new powers provided by the Amsterdam Treaty, which comes into force in May, and which will give the president more authority over his colleagues, especially where they act improperly or are simply not up to the job.
This is certainly not about weakening the Commission. It is about strengthening it as the crucial guardian not only of the EU treaties but of the entire project of European integration.
For this to be made a reality, however, the Commission presidents should, in future, be directly elected by and from among the ranks of the European Parliament. Until presidents of the Commission have their own democratic mandate they will never be able to resist bullying by member-state leaders of the kind which contributed to the latest mess.
The obvious winner in this crisis is the European Parliament. It is beginning, finally, to assert itself as a serious democratic force. But the parliament itself has to ensure that its own financial house is in order: there can be no repetition of the expenses fiddles which too many MEPs thought in past years were part of the perks of the job.
As for the Council of Ministers, representing the member-states, they should now reflect on the way they select Commission presidents and the way they resource the EU institutions. Last time too many of them opted to appoint one of their own club, Jacques Santer, precisely because they knew he would not be a strong president likely to make waves.
Perhaps a stronger president, readier to make waves and challenge the member-state powers-that-be, would never have allowed the Commission to get into the kind of mess we see today.
Editorial comment: page 15
John Palmer is director of the European Policy Centre, a Brussels think tank. Between 1975 and 1997 he was European editor of the Guardian