Help Wanted
The European Union will step up its search for a new Commission president on Thursday as caretaker president Jacques Santer's disgraced cabinet limps on, doing nothing more than running routine business.
Santer and his 20-member team said on Wednesday they wanted to end their caretaker role quickly and leave.
"I think it is better for us to go quickly...especially now as we have to deal with many important political problems...," Santer told British television in an interview.
The Commission resigned on Tuesday after independent experts accused it of turning a blind eye to fraud and cronyism, of losing control of the vast, Brussels-headquartered EU bureaucracy and shirking its responsibilities.
The resignations created a crisis in the short term. But, in the long run, they could bring lasting benefits.
CBS News Senior European Correspondent Tom Fenton reports that the commission's top officials are typically seen as political "has-beens" or second-rate politicians, whose reward for faithful party service in their home countries is a cushy job in Brussels. Their record of poor management and turning a blind eye to fraud and corruption has sapped public confidence in the commission's work.
Discredited as the 15-nation EU's top management and debunked by a hostile media, the Commission issued a statement saying: "We have resigned and we have neither the desire nor intention to stay in office longer than necessary."
Individual commissioners face a further roasting by the press if they take up "golden handshake" payments reported to be in excess of $200,000.
The commissioners, who earn over $250,000 a year, are nine months away from the scheduled end of their five-year terms.
Any hopes Santer may have had of a long farewell to his presidency disappeared on Wednesday as both German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and British Prime Minister Tony Blair led calls for the president to be replaced swiftly.
The EU needs a new team in place as it tackles urgent and difficult negotiations on reforming agricultural policy and finances at a summit in Berlin next week.
Italy is pushing former Prime Minister Romano Prodi to succeed Santer, while Europe's media have added the names of NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana, Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres and Spain's former prime minister Felipe Gonzalez to the list of possibles.
Germany, which holds the current EU presidency, has indicated it may call a special summit within weeks to appoint a new Commission.
Needing commission attention are farm reform, major trade issues such as the dispute with the United States over banana imports, and continued efforts to implement the new European single currency. Finally, there is the simple running of day-to-day EU business for 370 million Europeans.