The claim, made on 2 December 2011, is that no European Commissioner had ever been sacked for incompetence. To assess this, one must distinguish between collective resignation, voluntary resignation, and formal dismissal/compulsory retirement. Key evidence: 1. The Santer Commission (1999): In March 1999, the entire European Commission resigned en masse after an independent report found fraud, nepotism, and mismanagement. The BBC reported at the time that "until now not a single commissioner has resigned in the organisation's 42 year history." This was a collective resignation under threat of a European Parliament censure vote — not the sacking of an individual Commissioner for incompetence. 2. Compulsory retirement procedure (Article 247 TFEU, formerly Article 216 EC): The Treaty allows the European Court of Justice to compulsorily retire a Commissioner who "no longer fulfils the conditions required for the performance of his duties" or "has been guilty of serious misconduct," on application by the Council or the Commission. However, according to a 2024 legal analysis in the Common Market Law Review, "the compulsory retirement procedure has never been utilized in the context of alleged misconduct." 3. Edith Cresson (2006): The ECJ found that former Commissioner Édith Cresson had breached her obligations through favouritism/nepotism. However, she had already resigned voluntarily with the rest of the Santer Commission in 1999. The Court did not compulsorily retire her; it held that the finding of breach constituted an appropriate penalty in itself, without depriving her of pension rights. This was not a sacking. 4. Presidential power to request resignation (Article 17(6) TEU): The Treaty of Nice (in force from 2003) gave the Commission President the power to request a Commissioner's resignation. As of the interview date in December 2011, this power had not been formally exercised. The first notable case came in October 2012, when John Dalli resigned — but the General Court later ruled this was a voluntary resignation, not a formal request under Article 17(6). Assessment as of 2 December 2011: No European Commissioner had been formally sacked, compulsorily retired, or dismissed for incompetence (or any other ground) as of the interview date. The only forced departure — the collective resignation of the Santer Commission in 1999 — was not a sacking of an individual Commissioner. The compulsory retirement procedure existed in the Treaties but had never been used. The presidential power to compel resignation, introduced by the Treaty of Nice, had not yet been exercised. The claim is accurate. While one could argue that the Santer Commission's mass resignation under threat of censure was effectively a forced departure, it does not constitute an individual Commissioner being "sacked for incompetence." The core assertion — that no individual European Commissioner had ever been formally dismissed/sacked — is correct as of December 2011. Sources: - BBC News, "EU plunges into crisis" (16 March 1999), http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/297457.stm - Court of Justice of the European Union, "Commission v Cresson" (Case C-432/04, 11 July 2006), https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/CJE_06_56 - EUR-Lex, Article 247 TFEU, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:12016E247 - European Parliamentary Research Service, "Replacement of individual Commissioners" (2023), https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2023/751396/EPRS_ATA(2023)751396_EN.pdf - Cotter and Butler, "The President of the European Commission and the Power to Request a Commissioner's Resignation," Common Market Law Review (2024), https://findresearcher.sdu.dk/ws/portalfiles/portal/264744122/COLA2024044.pdf - General Court of the EU, "Dalli v Commission" (Case T-562/12, 12 May 2015), https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2015-05/cp150051en.pdf