While the new Commission is being built, the newest fad is to unearth (and denounce) the mistakes made by José Manuel Durão Barroso in his first attempts. With hindsight, everyone knows what the president-designate should have done. In my case, I'm not that gifted and I'm only going to pick up on one mistake (as well as another possible one, which I'll deal with later): that of having tried to overcome criticism of certain members of his initial team and reducing their remits and powers (se this section 29 October). The "competition" director general should have indicated to the president what dossiers should be withdrawn from Neelie Kroes to avoid any conflicts of interest. The position in the Commission that has the most direct powers, placed under the surveillance of its director general, whatever next!
Cacophony of interpretations. But the most peevish of the commentators saw a lot of other things, such as machiavellian manoeuvring, power struggles. According to one of them speaking about the distribution of the portfolios, Mr Barroso had sought to curry favour with his political allies in the Iraq affair (United Kingdom, Italy, Poland) and rubbed up the others the wrong way, especially the left in the European Parliament. But not at all, according to another pundit: Barroso favoured the small countries, and that's why the big countries, dissatisfied, did not intervene to support him in the conflict with the EP. Others have a different take on things. Jean-Louis Bourlanges considers that "the composition of the college and the allocation of the portfolios introduces an unmitigated hegemony of a pro-US style globalised, de-regulated and peripheral Europe, which Mr Rumsfeld had contemptuously described a old Europe". But one columnist has revealed to us that Mr Buttiglione's philosophical ravings were not ill-controlled lapses but what he was actually hiding "with Mr Barroso's obvious approval" of an "authoritative" interpretation of the Commission's role. Mr Barroso obviously intended to "build a war machine, using the power of the small countries". The small countries would have then refused to put pressure on the MEPs from their countries (which are more numerous) so that they voted for the Commission. Other quarters say that Barroso's mistake was essentially tactical: he had not taken into account the "parliamentary rebellion" and had overestimated the influence of Heads of government on the EP, choosing to take on the MEPs rather than alienate his former colleagues at the European Council. One commentator saw the affair as another episode in the eternal power struggle between the three main institutions: parliament wanted to assert itself, the Commission resisted because if was afraid of losing its autonomy and authority to parliament and the Council did not want a too powerful Commission.
Real imbalance. What tacticians, these guiding politicians are? And they'll also be the ones guiding Europe! And so many calculations of their behaviour, which on first impressions ought to be so straight forward! Faced with such a scientific display, I'll just say that:
imbalance within the Commission was not dreamt up by Mr Barroso but was present before he came on the scene and is borne out by the facts. The "One Commissioner one country rule", the small and the medium countries have nineteen Commissioners and the large countries (including Spain and Poland) have six. Whatever the president does, the nationals from the small countries have a clear advantage with regard to the internal workings and responsibilities at the Commission. It was these Heads of governments who decided this at Nice, the large countries themselves renouncing the right to having two Commissioners, which had already been acknowledged by Jean Monnet. Imbalance will remain as long as the "Commissioner per country" applies. I have been criticising this for a long time and I congratulate those who are belatedly discovering it today (but the" small" countries do not form a single homogenous block!).
speculating on the weakness of the Commission is not in anyone's interest and it is a miscalculation. A country that's a winner one day, will be a loser the following day;
the moment the European Parliament has some punch and works well, all of Europe will be better off and public opinion will be more interested in Union affairs.
If version two of the new Commission is prepared quickly and if it proves to be a more effective team compared to the first, the vicissitudes of October will have had some beneficial effects. But if this means that at the outset the president had taken on board some characters whom had not managed to completely convince him, then this is the second mistake which I referred to when I began this column. He should not have agreed to appointments, if he had not been completely convinced. Parliament had not found the three women Commissioners (out of eight) satisfactory (a percentage of those flunking which is much higher than the seventeen men). To improve the balance, we should not be limited to calling on Heads of governments to appoint women: we need high standards, even more so, given that there are many gifted women. But the ambition to do this needs to be there.
(F.R.)