La Commission Barroso se décompose-t-elle afin la fin de son mandat ?[en] 

"With the resignation of Markos Kyprianou and the one-month 'unpaid leave' taken by Franco Frattini, two members of the College have departed within less than a month", "more than a year before the end of their term of office," the authors Antonio Missiroli and Jérôme Bacquias point out. 

Kyprianou has gone back to "the country he knows best" to become the new Cypriot foreign minister in the wake of last month's presidential elections, while Frattini has also left, initially for a month, to participate in Italy's electoral campaign. He may "choose not to return to the Commission if he is offered a top ministerial post," the authors believe. 

The EPC paper argues that a "comparable trend emerged in the final months of the Prodi Commission (1999-2004)," when several commissioners left their positions to take up high-profile jobs in their home countries. 

The good news for the Commission(ers), the authors observe, is that "there seems to be political life - and at a very high level in government - after a term in Brussels". Commissioners "appear to be in strong demand, which may be a sign that direct experience of EU affairs (both political and administrative) is better appreciated at the national level," they speculate. 

"The bad news is that the Commission increasingly resembles an outgoing US administration, in which the departure of its most prominent initial members towards the end of its term - 'deserting the sinking ship', generally to snap up highly lucrative jobs in the private sector - is considered almost a fact of life". 

Looking back over the EU's history, the authors point out that there has been no shortage of early 'quitters' at the Berlaymont: "In terms of sheer numbers, the Italians and the French hold the European record." 

This may in part reflect the fact that the founding member states have had more commissioners over time than the others. It is nevertheless "striking" that virtually no British or German Commissioner has ever left the College ahead of time, states the EPC paper. 

Missiroli and Bacquias go on to argue that "political career patterns and incentives differ a great deal from country to country," adding that "the Commission of decades past is not comparable to the Barroso team" (which has the highest proportion of former prime ministers and foreign ministers ever). 

"But it is legitimate to wonder whether, at this particular moment, these early departures highlight a broader sense of uncertainty - over personal prospects, of course, but also over the future of the Commission itself," they state. 

The paper concludes: "Uncertainty is on the rise at Commission HQ in Rue de la Loi, along with a slight sense of malaise for an institution in need of aggiornamento - to borrow from the native languages of the serial 'quitters'."