The European Union commissioners cannot have it both ways. If they wish to advance the vision of a truly united Europe, they have to maintain the confidence of its 370 million citizens. Yet though they are prepared to bulldoze through key developments toward ultimate unity, such as the single currency, the commissioners seem unwilling to protect the integrity of organizations within an ever-more unified EU.
This failure has been thrown into sharp relief by the Eurostat scandal. It appears that for over a decade, top executives at the body responsible for keeping the statistical data on which key budgetary and political decisions are based have been running a fraud involving false accounts. Evidence of wrongdoing emerged as long ago as 1999, the year in which the European Parliament forced the resignation of the entire EU Commission, then led by Jacques Santer, because of its incompetence.
Yet the new commissioners, charged with cleaning up fraud and mismanagement, failed to act on the information. It took an investigation by the EU budgetary authorities to reveal a scandal which even commission President Romano Prodi could not ignore.
Still the commission has behaved with extraordinary reluctance. The three top Eurostat officials alleged to be behind the fraud have not been suspended, as they would have been in any organization. They have instead been moved to other jobs.
Matters are made no better by Prodi’s assertion that he believes that the EU commissioners themselves are not responsible for wrongdoing at Eurostat or the failure to investigate it properly. What he seems to be overlooking is that he and his colleagues were appointed to replace a complacent, incompetent and self-serving commission, one of whom even appointed her dentist to a sinecure in the EU bureaucracy. Given the failure of its predecessors, the Prodi commission should have set itself the highest standards and been alert to any hint of irregularity in the unwieldy EU bureaucracy. That they have failed is demonstrated by their refusal to even consider accepting responsibility for the debacle.
This will only deepen the cynicism of the ordinary European citizen who believes that Euro-enthusiasts in Brussels are set on foisting their unity agenda upon them, whatever voters think.
The good thing is that once again the European Parliament has a chance to show its teeth. Unfortunately they are neither very big nor sharp. Members could only force the ouster of the Santer commission by the extreme measure of refusing to pass its budget. Yet MEPs could seize for themselves a far greater role in representing their voters. Europe needs unity, but that can only come with confidence in all European institutions. The arrogance of Prodi’s commission is not about to win that support.
