Santer Commission - Repercussions

Repercussions

The immediate effect was that the politically weakened Commission was unable to react to the beginning of the Kosovo War and the close of the Agenda 2000 negotiations. The crisis had compounded the already reduced powers of the Commission in favour of the Parliament's legislative power, the Council's foreign policy role and the ECB's financial role. However the change with Parliament was the most profound, the previous permanent cooperation between the two bodies came to an end with the shift in power.

It was hoped by the leaders in Parliament that such a political challenge would generate useful publicity ahead of the elections, with previous polls producing a low turn out with a perception of the body being powerless. In this respect the affair did generate extensive media attention with the Parliament now seeming 'dramatic'. The committee report also was written in an unusually accessible manner, filled with soundbites. Further more it also drew greater attention from the Council to a Parliament willing to exercise its powers. Hence when the Council came in to agree on a new President, it was clear that the candidate had to be acceptable to parliament. The crisis also displayed the increasing party competition within the Parliament, leading to the development of a Parliamentary system between the executive and legislative branches. Indeed it can be seen that the government-opposition dynamic of the two main parties in Parliament aggravated the development of the crisis and contributed to the downfall of the Commission.

The Prodi Commission, which succeeded Marín's caretaker administration, announced a zero-tolerance approach to fraud. Following pressure from Parliament, the Commission quickly established OLAF, an anti-fraud office which replaced the Unit for the Co-ordination of Fraud Protection (UCLAF) established in 1988 and seen as having failed in its duty. OLAF was established with more powers and to be more independent, especially in terms of investigation where they are formally autonomous from the Commission. There were a few members who survived the Santer Commission to continue under Prodi: Franz Fischler, Erkki Liikanen, Mario Monti and Neil Kinnock. The latter was put in charge of the much needed institutional reform.

The reappointment of some of these members showed that individual Commissioners still maintained their own reputations despite the massive loss of face of the institution as a whole, while Cresson would have never been able to have been reappointed. The Commission itself suffered from a loss of trust and reputation, only compounded by the post-Delors mood. Prodi had to deal with increased euroscepticism which helped bring down the Santer Commission. Since the end of the Delors era, pro-integrationism had given way with greater concern about the Commission's powers. By just 2000 the Council curbed the Commission's powers once more when they believed Prodi overstepped his remit.