Prodi rebuffs MEPs’ bid to veto members of his team

Date: 10/06/1999

By Gareth Harding

INCOMING Commission President Romano Prodi risks an early clash with the newly elected European Parliament after rejecting calls for MEPs to be given the right to veto individual members of his future team.

Prodi has made it clear that if deputies vote down any would-be European Commissioner, he will ignore their advice unless strong evidence that he or she is unsuitable for the post emerges during confirmation hearings in the first week of September.

Once in office, Commissioners will be bound by a pledge to resign if asked to do so by the president. However, Prodi has emphasised that he will not wield the axe simply because MEPs have passed a motion of censure against an individual. Instead, he will reserve the right to assess whether the resignation calls are justified before deciding what action to take.

Both moves are in keeping with his belief that it is up to the president, and not the Parliament, to select and reshuffle the executive team, as is the practice in national governments.

" The Parliament does not have the right to sack individual Commissioners and he will defend his prerogatives," said a source close to Prodi. "What he is saying is that if you do not like my judgement, you have the power to sack the whole Commission. EU leaders asked for a strong Commission and asked him to be a strong Commission president and this is in line with all that."

Prodi is, however, seeking to sweeten the pill by making one of his two vice-presidents responsible for relations with the Parliament, underlining the importance he attaches to the institution's role and demonstrating how seriously the executive will treat the newly empowered body.

Senior MEPs have welcomed this move, but have reacted with alarm to the suggestion that they will effectively be asked to rubber-stamp the decisions made by Prodi and Union governments on the make-up of the Commission team.

The incoming president is playing a dangerous game by risking a repeat of the events of March when all 20 Commissioners quit over allegations of fraud, cronyism and mismanagement, rather than risk a parliamentary vote of censure. MEPs maintain that the whole crisis could have been avoided if the Parliament had the power to get rid of errant Commissioners, such as research chief Edith Cresson.

An official with the European People's Party, which is tipped to become the biggest group in the new assembly after this week's elections, said Prodi was "a little bit naïve if he thinks the hearings are going to be get-to-know-you sessions". A spokesman for the 214-member Socialist Group also insisted that if the assembly voted against a candidate Commissioner, he or she would have to stand down.

Although Prodi acknowledged at last week's EU Cologne summit that "recent events have shown the weaknesses in the current system", he appears reluctant to countenance the idea of treaty changes which would leave the make-up of the Commission hostage to the whims of the Parliament.

In a further signal that Prodi plans to stamp his personal authority on the new Commission, the incoming president proposes to take overall command of the EU executive's two most important portfolios: economic affairs and foreign policy.

Originally, there had been talk of entrusting these tasks to two vice-presidents, but Prodi is now planning to put them in charge of reform: one to act as the Commission's internal 'enforcer' and the other to take responsibility for relations with the Parliament and next year's talks on possible changes to the EU treaty.