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Report lashes 'lax' European Commission

The report slams the Commission for lax control of public finances, widespread cronyism and ignoring fraud.

It urges incoming Commission President Romano Prodi to make a clean break with the past.

The report is a follow-up to an earlier report which prompted all 15 members of European Commission, then headed by Jacques Santer, to resign en masse last March.

The European Parliament will vote next Wednesday on whether to accept the new Commission.

Mediocrity

The report condemns the European Commission's management of public money - how it pays its 16,000 civil servants, awards contracts and grants subsidies - and concludes that mediocrity has been rife.

It paints a picture of a machine where financial impropriety was almost invited by the lack of practical checks on contracts and the burden of an unwieldy, inefficient bureaucracy.

Without naming names, the report attacks senior Commission officials for failing to back Dutch whistleblower Paul van Buitenen when he tried to expose serious shortcomings in the financial control department where he worked.

The report offers a list of 90 recommendations, including the appointment of an EU "prosecutor" with powers to investigate offences committed by EU officials.

The main criticisms of the report include:

• over-reliance on external advisers for administrative and technical support, which led to "very worrying aberrations"

• insufficient control of the agricultural and regional aid funds - which account for 80% of the EU's budget - whose complexity makes them "vulnerable to fraud"

• personnel policies that encourage favouritism by national preference and a reluctance to discipline under-performers.

New team

The latest criticism was released days before a European Parliament votes to confirm Mr Prodi's new, enlarged 19-member team, which will have the job of reforming the institution.

Mr Prodi, who has promised a thorough reform of the Commission, has obtained pledges from each member of his team that he or she would resign if he asked them to do so.

In his first reaction, the future president pledged to give the report his close attention when drafting his reform plans.

Mr Prodi said that the report "will stiffen my resolve to turn the Commission into a modern and efficient administration".

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