BRUSSELS (AFP) - The European Union's nominated chief corporate regulator, accusing her critics of "character murder", insisted she would do a good job despite sitting on dozens of company boards in the past.
Dutch businesswoman Neelie Kroes, at an occasionally bruising confirmation hearing at the European Parliament, gave guarantees that she would suffer no conflicts of interest if confirmed as EU competition commissioner.
Kroes, who has sat on the boards of more than 30 Dutch and foreign companies, has resigned from all corporate positions, sold all her stocks and promised never again to work in the private sector.
"I am completely certain I can bring to the job the independence and the impartiality that citizens and businesses rightly expect," she told MEPs.
"My role is that of a referee. But do we ask a referee in football not to like the game, not to be interested in all its aspects?" Kroes added.
"No. We demand impartiality in applying the rules but we also want our referee to know the game inside-out."
Kroes says that if an anti-trust case comes up that might suggest a conflict of interest arising from her past involvement with a company, she will step aside and let another commissioner take charge of the investigation.
But her critics, notably among the Party of European Socialists (PES), persisted in maintaining that Kroes would suffer from too many grey areas of interest and ought to be dropped as the designated successor to Mario Monti.
Kroes -- once dubbed the Dutch answer to Margaret Thatcher -- promised she would be tough enough to stand up to the countless lobbyists and vested interests that will now assail her.
"I hope that with my explanations... it will be clear that I will be a tough girl who is greatly involved in Europe and who is looking forward to doing the job," she said.
Kroes and the fellow members of the team of president-elect Jose Manuel Barroso must survive the confirmation grillings before the new European Commission can take office on November 1.
The parliament can only endorse or reject the whole team, but can make life difficult for individual commissioners, as Kroes found when confronted with a fresh airing to scandals in the Netherlands of the 1980s and 1990s.
Dutch Socialist MEPs tried to pin responsibility on Kroes for granting a license to a company that was found to have illegally dumped poisonous substances at sea when she was transport minister in the 1980s.
And they also recalled her involvement as a business lobbyist in an abortive deal to sell Dutch frigates to the United Arab Emirates.
In a fresh development, Dutch MEP Paul Van Buitenen, who played a key role in the fall of Jacques Santer's corruption-tainted commission in 1999, called Monday for Kroes to face a criminal investigation on no fewer than 18 counts.
"These are unfounded allegations. There's no way anything to do with any slush funds, I haven't take any bribes and never would," Kroes said in a tense exchange with Van Buitenen at the parliamentary hearing.
And at a subsequent press conference, Kroes lashed out at Van Buitenen and her other critics.
"In the Netherlands, and in Europe, thank heavens, we are living in a democracy. You have to prove when someone is guilty and not the other way around," she said.
"We say in Dutch that's character murder."
The PES said Kroes had been "vague and evasive" during her hearing in front of the European Parliament's economic affairs committee, notably by failing to spell out what she would do if the committee refused to endorse her.
But the Dutch politician would appear safe with the centre-right European People's Party lining up behind her.