and Steel Community . This article granted Parliament a privileged position in enforcing the principle of accountability . However , although nine motions of censure were introduced between 1972 and 1999 , none of them secured a majority . The decision of the Commission to resign in March 1999 thus marked a dramatic moment in the history of the institutions .
The origins of the crisis can be traced back to an argument about granting budgetary discharge to the Commission in accordance with what is now Article 319 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union . Following up the report of the Court of Auditors on the 1996 budget and its refusal to give a ‘ Statement of assurance ’ as to the legality and regularity of transactions underlying the payments for that year , Parliament decided in March 1998 to postpone the granting of discharge . There followed a fraught period , during which allegations of mismanagement and fraud proliferated and the mood of Parliament darkened , with many ready to refuse the discharge and to consider the next step of bringing a vote of censure 11 .
Pat Cox , who was leader of the Liberal Group and later President of Parliament , gives an account in his interview of how the seemingly abstruse debate about the management of money by the services of the Commission came to be viewed by him and many others as a much broader argument . As Cox put it , ‘ the issue was not one of accountancy ’, as revealed in the discharge procedure , ‘ but one of public accountability ’. Once the dispute was presented in these general terms , it proved impossible for President Santer to defend his position in terms of the collective responsibility of the College of Commissioners . Cox described it as ‘ the shield of responsibility being transformed into a sword of accountability ’.
11 . For a detailed account of this period , see J . Priestley , Six Battles that shaped Europe ’ s Parliament , 2008 , John Harper , London .
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