Global Debates

Eyebrows shot sky high in Brussels today when the Court of First Instance – the arm of the European Court of Justice that deals with cases involving EU employees – found that Edith Cresson had “acted in breach of her obligations as a European Commissioner” but refrained from imposing a punishment.

Cresson’s hiring of her dentist as a special adviser was one of the scandals that blew the foundations away from under the European Commission headed by Jacques Santer, the former prime minister of
Luxembourg. The Santer Commission was the only one in nearly 50 years to resign en masse in March 1999 after it was found to have taken too relaxed an approach to evidence of fraud and corruption.

The most surprising aspect of yesterday’s judgment was its final paragraph: “Lastly, while the breach of obligations arising from the office of Member of the Commission calls, in principle, for the imposition of a penalty, the Court held that, having regard to the circumstances of the case, the finding of breach constitutes, of itself, an appropriate penalty and, accordingly, not to impose on Mrs Cresson a penalty in the form of a deprivation of her right to a pension or other benefits in its stead.”

The first of its kind, the case was launched by the Commission in 2004 in an attempt to deprive Cresson of her pension. It appears to have won the argument but lost the penalty. The Court said that the appointment of the dentist as a scientific adviser broke the rules governing the appointment of cabinet members (a Commissioner’s personal staff) and of visiting scientists. Cresson was told she could not take Berthelot (the dentist) in to her cabinet staff but she insisted, nonetheless, on creating his dubious role as scientific adviser. And it also seems that Berthelot was actually too old to have been taken on in any role.

A former French prime minister Cresson had an iron will which made strong men wilt. The head of her cabinet at the time was Francois Lamoureux, who, despite his reputation as a formidable bureaucratic warrior, was obviously unable to apply the Commission’s rules to the letter. In the wake of this debacle Neil Kinnock was given the job of reforming the Commission, lowering the risk of fraud and strengthening the enforcement of its rules. The Cresson affair probably could not repeat itself now. But its main legacy are bureaucratic procedures which are so heavy that the Commission struggles to spend some parts of its budget.