European Commission President Jacques Santer speaks at a news conference during which he announced that all 20 members of the European Commission resigned March 16 in the wake of a scathing independent report into fraud, nepotism and financial irregularity at the EU executive. The hard-hitting 144-page report, compiled by an independent panel of experts in just six weeks, accused commissioners of losing control over the sprawling Brussels bureaucracy that proposes and implements EU laws.

NK/IG/ME