"Misbehave and You're Out" - Diana's Message to the Newly Approved European Commission

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Fri 24th Sep 1999

In Strasbourg today Euro-MPs approved the new European Commission, headed by Commission President Romano Prodi.

As Diana Wallis MEP pointed out, there are, however, conditions attached:

"Parliament approved the Commission today, but only with certain conditions. We made it clear that if a Commissioner receives a vote of no confidence from the European Parliament, we will expect Commission President Prodi to ask them to resign."

Current powers do not allow the European Parliament to sack individual Commissioners; they can only sack the entire Commission at once.

"This is not a satisfactory state of affairs, and one which the Liberal Democrats seek to change. For the moment we have to work within the boundaries of the powers that we do have.

"I have confidence that President Prodi will abide by any future decision of the Parliament and ask a Commissioner to resign, should we wish him to do so."

The Commission was approved by an overwhelming majority of the European Parliament. Only extremist parties voted against the Commission approval and boycotted the following photo opportunity with British Commissioners Chris Patten and Neil Kinnock.