By Paul Ames
In the end, EU leaders lined up to unanimously endorse Jose Manuel Barroso's nomination for a second term as European Commission president, despite days of breathless speculation about an imminent leadership crisis.
Barroso still needs approval from the European Parliament where his most vocal critics are lurking, but no rivals have emerged to challenge him and it would take a brave or reckless gambler to bet against the former Portuguese prime minister taking up a second five-year mandate as head of the EU's executive office.
What is a lot less certain is how his second term will play out.
Critics are bracing for five more years of what they see as weak leadership marked by policy flip-flops and an obsessive fear of upsetting powerful national leaders.
Officials at the EU head office are hoping that, freed from the need to seek a reappointment, an emancipated Barroso will jettison his cautious approach and inject new vigor into an institution which is bruised and battered after serving as a lighting rod for criticism over issues as diverse as the economic crisis to the referendum failures of the EU's reform treaties.
Following the green light from the 27 government leaders early on Friday, Barroso's appointment could go up for a vote in the parliament next month, although his opponents are hoping to delay the decision until after the summer recess in the hope of finding a credible alternative.
In elections to the European Parliament earlier this month, center-right parties that support Barroso made major advances but did not win an overall majority, which means he will need backing from Liberals, Socialists or Greens.
Some Socialist and Green politicians, particularly in France, have demonized Barroso as a cheerleader for the excesses of globalization and "Anglo-Saxon"-style capitalism which they blame for the financial meltdown.
"The last four or five years was a complete failure in terms of social Europe," Martin Schulz, leader of the European Parliament's Socialist group, said. "The balance of Barroso has been completely negative."
Many cannot forgive him for lining up with the U.S. and British decision to invade Iraq during his time as conservative prime minister in Portugal.
In a letter to the EU leaders ahead of their decision Barroso reached out to his critics by pledging to promote social solidarity, fight climate change and improve supervision of financial markets in his second term. Socialist governments in Britain, Spain, Sweden and even his old political rivals in Portugal were already giving strong support to Barroso.
"The most important urgent priorities are clear, it is the economic, financial crisis and it is progress on climate change," Barroso told a news conference after the decision. "We have to be more ambitious, we have to have more Europe."
Despite the European Parliament's increased oversight power over the commission in recent years, it is the bloc's 27 national governments who will have most influence on the success or failure of Barroso's second term.
The national capitals must appoint the other members of Barroso's commission, deciding whether to give him a team of powerful and loyal big hitters, non-entities or stooges under orders from the homeland. The nominations are expected to come through in October, although the process is complicated by the continued confusion over the Lisbon Treaty on EU reform.
After last year's veto of the treaty by a "no" vote in Ireland, the EU leaders are due on Friday to give binding guarantees that Ireland's neutrality and laws on tax and abortion will not be affected in order to encourage the Irish to change their minds in a second referendum later this year.
However the Irish vote, Barroso's second term, like the first, will be much occupied by the Lisbon Treaty.
If the charter is finally ratified by all EU members, he will have to oversee its implementation. No easy task since it involves an overhaul of the commission's set up, notably by strengthening its foreign policy arm.
Under the new treaty, Barroso will also have to get along with whoever is appointed to the powerful new post as permanent chairman of the European Council, replacing the current system whereby the presidency rotates every six months among EU leaders.
With high profile names such as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair reportedly in the running, Barroso will have his work cut out to avoid being eclipsed by the newcomer.
If the Irish vote "no" again, Barroso will be entangled in an institutional crisis making it difficult to focus on his avowed aims of re-launching the economy and tacking global warming.
Euro-enthusiasts often make the charge that the commission under Barroso has lost its position as the engine of European integration and that the EU's executive body has been left rudderless as Barroso seeks to court favor in Paris or Berlin.
Many hark back to the golden age of the 1980s and early 90s, when France's Jacques Delors as commission president boosted the influence of the EU's central institutions and led the union into major projects such as the single market and the euro currency.
The comparison is unjust. Delors succeeded because he had the support of French President Francois Mitterrand and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, both staunch supporters of European integration as a way of binding the newly re-united Germany into an EU structure.
Times have changed. Enthusiasm for transferring powers to the EU has waned in both Berlin and Paris. The often strained relationship between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy shows little sign of maturing along Kohl-Mitterrand lines.
Even if the relationship were to bloom following Merkel's likely re-election in the autumn, the Franco-German axis would struggle to regain its former pre-eminence in an EU that has almost doubled in size since Delors' days.
For all his difficulties, Barroso has certainly fared better than his two predecessors, Jacques Santer whose commission collapsed amid accusations of malpractice against some members, and Romano Prodi who was widely seen as an amiable bumbler.
One of Barroso's biggest tasks will be seeking to rekindle public support for the EU which has steadily dropped over the years, a decline starkly illustrated by the high abstention rate and support for euro-skeptic parties in the European Parliament elections.
Barroso previously used both his mother's and father's surname, following the Portuguese custom and was known back home as Jose Manuel Durao Barroso. When he moved to Brussels in 2004, he decided that was too much of a mouthful for his new international audience and dropped the Durao.
If Barroso really wants to carve out a strong role in his second mandate, he might want to start by reviving his full name -- the word "Durao" means "big tough guy."
(Xinhua News Agency June 19, 2009)
