EU: The EU Commission President, Mr Romano Prodi, has rejected calls to sack members of the Commission over a fraud scandal at Eurostat, the EU's statistical office.
Mr Prodi agreed, however, to co-operate with a European Parliament inquiry into the affair and promised to take action against any commissioner if new facts justified such action.
At a two and a half-hour meeting in Strasbourg, Mr Prodi told the Parliament's political group leaders and members of its Budget Control Committee that accounting practices at Eurostat "went off the rails" during the 1990s. But he blamed Eurostat's sacked Director General, Mr Yves Franchet, for the scandal, exonerating the Commissioner with ultimate responsibility for the agency, Mr Pedro Solbes.
"Mr Solbes has no cause for personal reproach. However, I have naturally spoken to him and he, equally naturally and with his characteristic honesty, shares my sadness and deep regret at these events," Mr Prodi said.
The chair of the Budget Control Committee, Ms Diemut Theato, said the committee would examine the evidence concerning Eurostat and prepare a report before Christmas.
The Parliament's President, Mr Pat Cox, said it was too soon to predict the conclusions MEPs would draw, but he indicated that Mr Solbes still had questions to answer. Mr Cox was especially critical of what he described as a "zone of passivity" in which commissioners depend unquestioningly on a relationship of trust with their officials.
"The MEPs who spoke today appreciate that this trust is necessary, but they expect that you trust but verify," he said.
Mr Prodi was scathing about the activities of Mr Franchet, who was a director of some companies with which Eurostat had irregular financial relationships. He blamed Mr Franchet for failing to inform Mr Solbes of what was going on at Eurostat, including an investigation by OLAF, the EU's anti-fraud agency.
"As regards Pedro Solbes, everything I have told you, which is based on all the reports in my possession today, shows that mismanagement at Eurostat dates back to a period when he was not responsible for the Office.
"He was not properly informed by Eurostat's Director-General. I would go even further. Given the evidence, 'disinformation' might not be too strong a word, and he had based his relations with Eurostat on the trust he placed in its Director-General.
"And no one could have foretold that the OLAF investigation would implicate the Director-General himself," he said.
Some MEPs remained unhappy last night about Mr Prodi's failure to sack Mr Solbes, while others demanded the heads of a further two Commissioners, Mr Neil Kinnock and Ms Michaela Schreyer. But Mr Prodi insisted that he was taking an honourable course in refusing to bow to pressure to punish his fellow commissioners unfairly.
"If I had sacked a commissioner today, I would be a great politician; if I had sacked three, I would have been a hero," he said. "But in my political career, I have never made progress by walking over the bodies of others."