The European Commission. A knight in tarnished armour

Far from reinvigorating the European project, the president-elect of the commission has run into deep trouble before he begins

JUST three months ago, José Manuel Duro Barroso was being hailed as the saviour of the European Commission - if not the European Union. After years of uncertain leadership under Romano Prodi, the Portuguese politician was greeted as just what the commission needed - a good communicator, tough and decisive.

This week it all went wrong. Mr Barroso was unable to get the European Parliament to approve his 25-member commission. Faced with the certainty of a negative vote, he chose instead to withdraw his team - promising to reshuffle it and then re-submit it to the parliament for approval some time in the next month.

The Barroso commission - which had been due to take office on November 1st - is now in limbo. The Prodi commission will have to lumber on, until the Barroso team can win parliament's approval. And Mr Barroso now faces serious questions about his judgment - and even his own future as president.

The parliament's main reason for rejecting the Barroso commission was the appointment of Rocco Buttiglione, an Italian politician, as the commissioner for justice and home affairs (see Charlemagne). The parliament's civil-liberties committee recommended against the appointment. Sarah Ludford, a member of the committee, calls Mr Buttiglione a “militant fundamentalist”, with views on homosexuality, abortion and women's rights that make him unfit to protect civil liberties in the EU.

Mr Barroso, however, refused to shift Mr Buttiglione. Instead he offered to set up a new committee to monitor civil rights, apparently confident this would suffice to persuade the parliament as a whole to approve his commission. By October 27th, it was clear he had miscalculated.

Had Mr Barroso sacrificed or reshuffled Mr Buttiglione earlier, he would probably have been able to limit the damage. But now the likelihood is that he will have to make major changes to his team. If the Italian government insists on retaining Mr Buttiglione as commissioner, Mr Barroso will have to find him a new job - preferably a minor post that does not require moral judgments - and find a new nominee to take the justice job.

But several other commissioners may now need to be moved or replaced. The European People's Party, the conservative parliamentary grouping that backed Mr Buttiglione to the bitter end, will try to ensure that other commissioners are also shifted. Their preferred target seems to be Laszlo Kovacs, a Hungarian Socialist, nominated to the energy portfolio.

And although Mr Buttiglione was the only commissioner-designate to be formally rejected by the relevant parliamentary committees, several others made a bad impression and may now also be vulnerable. They include Neelie Kroes, the Dutch nominee who has been assigned the competition portfolio, and Mariann Fischer Boel, a Dane who has been nominated as agriculture commissioner. Both women were deemed to have given uncertain performances in their confirmation hearings - and they have been accused of conflicts of interest. Ingrida Udre, a Latvian who is nominated as commissioner for taxation, is also seen as unacceptably Eurosceptic by some in the parliament.

Mr Barroso might prefer it if the relevant governments simply withdrew their nominees and sent him new candidates. But delicate questions of national pride and political balance are at stake. For example, if three of the five commissioner-designates to lose their jobs were women, Mr Barroso's much-trumpeted feminist credentials would take a knock.

A Portuguese nightmare

Mr Barroso has no power to force countries to offer him a new candidate - and several may take umbrage if they are told that their national champion is not up to the job. The political groups in the parliament will also be watching carefully for any signs that commissioners from their end of the political spectrum are bearing too much of the brunt of a reshuffle. In a nightmare scenario for Mr Barroso, Italy might refuse to withdraw Mr Buttiglione - and the European Parliament might then reject any commission including him.

It is crucially important for Mr Barroso himself that he handle this tricky situation with skill and confidence. His reputation for competence has been badly damaged by the series of political blunders he has made since his appointment. Regardless of Mr Buttiglione's views on gays, it was a mistake to put a member of the government of Silvio Berlusconi in charge of the justice portfolio. Giving the French and German commissioners relatively unimportant jobs may also have deprived Mr Barroso of crucial support from two big countries that had not backed his nomination. Then Mr Barroso's reaction to the gathering crisis over Mr Buttiglione was slow and inept. He seemed not to realise his difficulties until far too late. Some French MEPs - including Pervenche Beres, head of the powerful economic-affairs committee - want Mr Barroso replaced.

Latent antagonisms, stemming from the fact that Mr Barroso supported the Iraq war and is regarded as an economic liberal, are coming to the surface. It still seems highly improbable that Mr Barroso will actually be forced to step down. The EU's 25 heads of government will be very loth to re-open a discussion that bitterly divided them earlier this year. But when Mr Barroso does finally take office, he risks doing so as a seriously diminished figure.

Andrew Duff, a British Liberal MEP, says he is extremely concerned about the possibility of “an enfeebled and wounded Barroso” for the next five years. To avoid that, the heads of government who nominated Mr Barroso must now help find an acceptable solution. They will have an opportunity when they meet in Rome on October 29th to sign the new European constitution. The choice of Rome as a venue was meant to be happily symbolic; that was where the treaty creating the European Economic Community was signed in 1957. But Rome now has a darker resonance for Mr Barroso: as the home of Mr Berlusconi - and the pope.

Far from reinvigorating the European project, the president-elect of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, has run into deep trouble before he begins.

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