Cultural revolution in Europe

Neil Kinnock, Vice President of the European Commission and survivor from Jacques Santer’s discredited commission team which resigned en masse last March in the wake of damning allegations of fraud and mismanagement, has unveiled a blueprint for administrative reform that aims to overhaul the EU institutions and instate a new culture of probity. His 84-point action plan, which is to be implemented over the next two and a half years, centres on an “inter-institutional committee on standards in public life” which will advise on standards and oversee officials’ conduct. Their behaviour will be subject to new strict codes that also apply to commissioners, the product of reforms already initiated by Romano Prodi’s team. The changes come in the wake of restructuring of the commission’s directorates and the move to rotation of senior posts to break their domination by individual countries; France, for example, has had the major hand in agricultural policy for the last forty years. There are three other main aspects of the new reform plan: