Losers outnumber winners after crisis

Date: 21/01/1999

By Gareth Harding

Former US President John F. Kennedy once said that "victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan".

In the wake of last week's vote on whether to censure the European Commission for its handling of EU taxpayers' money, many political groups within the European Parliament were claiming credit for bringing the institution to its knees.

But in reality, there were few winners and some very high-profile losers amongst the European Parliament's myriad political parties.

Most pundits agree that the assembly's two largest groups, the Socialists and the Christian Democrats, have fared disastrously from their month long stand-off with the EU's executive arm.

Having provoked the crisis in the first place, both groups changed tack more times than a ship in a storm and succeeded in splitting themselves down the middle in the process.

On the other hand, smaller groups such as the Liberals and Greens have won plaudits for their consistently hard-line stance towards fraud, waste and corruption in the Union.

For the past 20 years, Parliament's two main parties - which between them hold more than two-thirds of the seats in the assembly - have enjoyed a cosy, some would say incestuous, relationship.

However, five months before elections to the Strasbourg-based assembly are due to be held, relations between the two groups are at an all-time low, with Christian Democrats accusing the Socialists of saving the Commission's skin and the left accusing the right of provoking the political crisis for electoral gain.

The battle began in December when Parliament voted narrowly not to sign off the EU's accounts for 1996 because of widespread allegations of fraud and mismanagement of the Union's budget.

Challenged by Commission President Jacques Santer to either back or sack his team, the Socialists tabled a motion of no confidence in the institution but immediately said that they would vote against it to shore up the beleaguered bureaucracy.

Socialist Group leader Pauline Green also admitted that the move was designed to call the bluff of Christian Democrats, Greens and Liberals who had opposed the budget discharge.

MEPs from all parties were said to be angry at being bounced into a motion of censure by Green. "The Germans were furious, the Italians were shaking their heads and the rest of us were left with the problem of trying to explain Parliament's curious position to the electorate," said one senior member.

As MEPs packed their bags for Strasbourg at the beginning of last week, the position of most parties seemed clear. The Socialists and most Christian Democrats were against sacking the Commission; Greens, nationalists and neo-fascists were for it; whilst Liberals favoured throwing out the two Commissioners at the centre of the allegations, Manuel Marín and Edith Cresson.

But as the week progressed and the tension mounted, all the political parties changed their tune to cover their backs. The Christian Democrats swung behind Liberal demands to boot out Marín and Cresson, the Socialists then flirted with the idea of sacking Santer if the two Commissioners were ousted, whilst on the day of the vote the Liberals toughened their stance to demand the removal of the entire EU executive.

One reason for the vacillation was that all the main political groups were split over the Commission's fate. German Social Democrats were vehemently opposed to letting Santer's team off the hook and British and German Christian Democrats ended up following their lead.

MEPs also pointed to political errors made by the leaders of Parliament's two largest groups. Members from all groups say that by changing tack depending on which way the political wind was blowing and backing a discredited Commission, Green has destroyed her chances of becoming the next Parliament president.

Likewise, the reputation of Christian Democrat boss Wilfried Martens lies in tatters after almost a third of his group voted to censure the Commission.

The one undoubted victor of the showdown was the new Liberal Group leader Pat Cox. Aside from making a series of impressive set-piece speeches, Cox's hard-hitting approach left the two major parties trailing in his wake and won praise from MEPs across the spectrum.

Features on the impact in the European Parliament of the recent tensions between it and the European Commission.