The setting up of an independent committee on standards in public life and a new audit service are among the key recommendations of a report adopted today in the European Parliament which seeks to bring in a radical overhaul of the European Commission, in the wake of the highly critical experts’ reports last year on the running of the Commission. The adoption of the Parliament’s blueprint for change, which was backed by 320 votes to 100, with 123 abstentions, coincided with the publication today of the Commission’s own plans for modernising its management structures and bureaucracy. The Commission’s strategy which takes the form of a 84-point action plan put together by vice-president Neil Kinnock proposes a complete revamp of financial management and control and updating staff policy. A new internal audit service to check that money has been spent properly and an inter-institutional Committee on Standards in Public Life to supervise all EU institutions are being proposed.