European Union Commission
The European Commission is a body that implements the most sensitive and powerful issues in the European institutions. It is founded in 1957 as a result of the meetings through the Treaty of Rome, and its headquarters located in Brussels.
Thus, its main work is to formulate the laws, treaties and policies in the European countries, and imposing all decisions around the circle through its legislative and executive powers, because no country is allowed to prefer its internal power over EC.
The EC consists of 17.000 staff, work for 320 million people. The EC chairman is the president and his strong post can influence the direction of the commission. And The Ministry of Defence alone has 116,000 civilians working for it. After the president there are twenty commissioners who have a precise field to work on such as: transport and environment etc.They serve for five years and it can be extended. The country with a big population has two and the small has only one, these commissioners suggest proposals to the Council of Ministers.
For every commissioner there is a cabinet which set by the commissioner him/herself and performs as an advisory body to the commissioner, and these commissioners can approve or reject any proposals, because if they approve them, then they will become laws.
Moreover, The EC is not an elected body, that's why it received a great deal of criticism. In 2002, in Britain for example, when the Commission stated a law that old refrigerators cannot be thrown by shops because of their harm on the environment, but Britain didn't have facilities to dispose them. It stored them while building facilities to tackle this problem. If it didn't comply with the EU it would be fined.
In 1999, there was a scandal which made the greatest crisis of that time, involving only four commissioners, but it made all 20 commissioners resigned.
The EP is not allowed to sack individual commissioners; its report over that scandal left no other choice for the commissioners, therefore, they left their tasks. The president of EC was Jacques Santer and its current president is Romano Prodi of Italy.
