The More Things Change...

Last week, Prodi said essentially the same thing. Solbes "was not properly informed by Eurostat's director general," he said. "Given the evidence, disinformation might not be too strong a word." The main party leaders in the European Parliament and leading members of the budget committee were ready to accept that, at least for now. They await the full report of the Commission's Internal Audit Service at the end of October, along with fulfillment of Prodi's promise of an "action plan" for better financial governance.

The Parliament's forbearance was largely grounded in pure politics. The Socialists in Parliament had made it clear that they wouldn't accept one of their own taking the heat alone, and so had the Spanish government. Solbes also has his fans among some of the Union's smaller states for his tough defense of the E.U.'s budgetary guidelines. "He has stood tall against France and Germany and that has not been easy," says one Brussels-based diplomat. "If he were to resign, it would definitely hurt the credibility of the euro and the ability to enforce the Stability and Growth Pact." Said a Prodi aide: "Had Solbes been forced out it would have triggered a domino effect. Realizing the political repercussions most MEPs decided to hold their fire."

That result infuriates many others who feel the Commission's endless report-making and procedural delays mask a will to deceive. "It's business as usual in Brussels," says Chris Heaton-Harris, a British Conservative MEP and staunch eurosceptic. "It's like a time warp. They're just being asked to do what they were asked to do four years ago, again. It's a great way of kicking things back into the long grass." Austrian Socialist Herbert Bösch, the budget committee's standing rapporteur against fraud, refused out of protest to attend Prodi's testimony and a bizarre preparatory session where committee members were not allowed to talk to each other, use their mobile phones, recording devices or even write notes to prevent leaks. "The Commission seems to forget who owes an account to whom," says Bösch. "All this about new administrative structures is hot air. Abuses just bounce through the bureaucracy until there's no responsibility left. These high officials have to be made to feel their responsibility."

It is a point that has been made repeatedly and with undiminished frustration by a string of E.U. whistleblowers. Marta Andreasen, the chief accountant hired to revamp the Commission's accounting system in January 2002 and removed from her job four months later for going public with her concerns, feels vindicated by what's come out so far on the Eurostat matter. "They have never said I was wrong" about the Commission's system being open to fraud, she says. "If you know your system is open to fraud, surely it is a lack of responsibility of the management to go on using it without making changes." With a new constitution and ten new member states on the launch pad, European Parliament elections next June, and a new Commission slated to take over next September, Parliament so far hasn't seen this matter warranting an institutional massacre a la 1999. After all, that act of political hardball didn't exactly make MEPs heroes for an adoring European public. And with another Brussels financial scandal back on the boil, that public might well wonder whether it made any difference at all.