The European Parliament has been very much the Cinderella of the European institutions. The Commission proposes, the Council of Ministers disposes. However, the Parliament has an ever-growing role in co-decision on legislation and has shown that it must not be ignored as the ultimate budgetary authority.
This is a Cinderella which bites back, as the embattled Commission is finding out this week. On Thursday, if two-thirds of those present, amounting to at least half of the 626 MEPs, vote no confidence in the Commissioners, they will be forced to resign.
If that happens, the Council of Ministers will have to propose, and then win acceptance of, a new Commission when the focus is supposed to be on negotiating a budget for post-2000. Hence the nervousness and appeal for restraint from the joint meeting between the Commission and the German Presidency yesterday.
In one sense, the tension is inevitable. If there were no crisis, MEPs would have to invent one. Elections are looming, and there is a serious need to convince the public that MEPs are more than free riders on a very lucrative gravy train. What better way to make the point than as guardians of the people's money and fighters against bureaucracy?
But in doing so are they in danger of shooting themselves in their collective foot?
To get more powers the Commission needs the sympathy of member-governments. If MEPs go too far in punishing a Commission which, for all its flaws, is unlikely to be any different from what would replace it, governments faced with all-important budget negotiations will not forgive them quickly.
Yet some MEPs reckon they have nothing to lose. Member-states are faced with the alternative of leaving in place the so-called "nuclear option", under which MEPs can sack all 20 Commissioners together or do nothing, or of putting in place a more selective instrument which will allow Parliament to pick off individuals. The alternative of rowing back on MEPs' rights is simply not on politically.
Others are more pragmatic. In effect, there are two battles going on. Some MEPs are genuinely indignant at the casual way in which the Commission has approached the drip, drip of financial and personnel scandals which have built up an unexpected momentum. Others see the issue as an opportunity to shift the institutional balance in favour of the Parliament.
The former would like to see heads roll and have rallied behind proposals from the Liberal group leader, Mr Pat Cox, which target two individual commissioners, Ms Edith Cresson and Mr Manuel Marin. The procedure is largely based on sufficiently embarrassing the Commission to force Mr Santer to jettison the two.
The latter, led by the Socialists' leader, Ms Pauline Green, talk of extracting institutional concessions from the Commission and dread the prospect of it being brought down as jeopardising their long-term strategy of incremental advance.
Last night suggestions from the German Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder, that a new inquiry could examine the Commission's role in the fight against fraud was calculated to strengthen the Socialists' hand.
The Socialists have also complained that the selection of Commissioners for targeting reflects a deeply political approach. Why, they ask, has no one asked for the head of the Commissioner for Agriculture, Mr Franz Fischler, when farm fraud is by far the largest area of concern to the EU? Because he is a Christian Democrat?
Yet the truth is that whichever faction wins, Parliament wins. Even if the Commission survives the week, there can be little doubt that its credibility will have suffered severely.