THE campaign to sack all 20 members of the European Commission next week escalated yesterday as President Jacques Santer and his colleagues continued to send off allegations of financial mismanagement, cover-ups and cronyism.
As Euro MPs prepare to vote on a censure motion against the Commission next Thursday, signs began to emerge that even the Institution supporters inside the European Parliament may be changing sides.
Pauline Green, leader of the Socialists, the largest Parliamentary political group, who has staunchly defended President Santer's team up till now, said yesterday: ''If the Commission does not command the support of the majority of this house, I want it sacked now. I do not want this to drag on for three months.''
Later, she added: ''At the present moment, we might all be voting for a censure motion.'' Already, Conservatives and their Continental Christian Democrat partners, Liberals and Greens, as well as many members in the Socialists ranks, are lining up to censure the Commission.
Their particular targets are former French Prime Minister Edith Cresson and her Spanish Socialist colleague Manuel Marin. Both have been heavily criticised by the Union's auditors over the management of EU spending programmes under their responsibility.
They have consistently, and aloofly, denied any fraud or wrong-doing and now find themselves under pressure from the Parliament to resign.
A confidential internal Commission audit identified several contractual breaches, serious organisational weaknesses, inadequate financial controls, and evidence of possible favouritism in the recruitment and promotion of personnel in the running of Mrs Cresson's #430m youth training programme.
The leader of the Euro Tories, Edward McMillan-Scott, said: ''The British tradition is that a Minister who misleads Parliament - or who presided over grave departmental mismanagement - should step down. British Conservative MEPs expect nothing less of the highest-paid officials in Europe.''
Under the EU's rules, however, it is impossible to dismiss individual commissioners. The whole team must go or none at all. But the hostility that many Euro MPs now display for Mrs Cresson, Mr Marin and three or four other Commissioners who, it is felt, have not fully shouldered their political responsibility, may convince enough to support the censure motion. This needs a two thirds majority to succeed.
Despite four separate censure motions in the past decade none has come remotely near crossing that hurdle.
If it did so this time, however, even Commissioners with fairly solid reputations such as Neil Kinnock and Sir Leon Brittan would be forced to stand down, and EU governments would have to appoint a new team.
The very real threat the Commission now faces of being thrown out of office for the first time in 40 years is partly of its own making. President Santer has angered Euro MPs by indicating that he would see out his final year in office even if a majority of MEPs approved the censure motion, but it failed to meet the legal hurdle.
The Commission is also under attack for its decision to suspend on half pay one of its own auditors, 41 year-old Dutchman Paul van Buitenen who handed MEPs a pile of confidential documentsalleging that a number of internal investigations into possible fraud were being stalled or covered up.
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