Major political groups made clear their intention to better coordinate political action inside the Commission. Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, whom a congress in Prague re-elected as PES president on 8 December, told fellow party members that the European Socialists had to "reform or die". In a written statement, he advocated better coordination between socialists in the European and national institutions.
Gathered in Bonn yesterday, the EPP also re-elected its leader, former Prime Minister of Belgium Wilfried Martens, for a new three-year term. Martens expressed his satisfaction with the fact that his political group contained 13 EU heads of state and government and 13 of the new commissioners.
"We are leading the main institutions with José Manuel Barroso, Herman Van Rompuy and Jerzy Buzek," Martens stated.
Meeting with journalists recently, the leader of the liberal group in the European Parliament, Guy Verhofstadt, said he was satisfied with the nomination of eight commissioners from his political family in the Barroso II team. He also stated his intention to change the way the ALDE leadership works with its liberal commissioners.
Until now, he said, they had only met once a month in a Brussels restaurant, which he said was "nice, but you don't make much policy with that". Meetings with the commissioners will now be more streamlined and more regular, he said.
So far, Barroso has always insisted that he does not look at the political colours of his team's members, often claiming that he "forgets" which political camp they come from. However, the new rhetoric, which comes from within his own centre-right camp too, conveys the message that the Barroso II team might differ greatly from the previous college of commissioners, both in its internal organisation and in its relations with the other EU institutions.
Marco Incerti, a researcher at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), told EurActiv that the looming changes were significant, but not necessarily negative.
Incerti argued that it would be unfair to say that previous Commissions had not been political, as there had been episodes such as the 'Bolkestein Directive' on services in the internal market, named after the Dutch internal market commissioner in Romano Prodi's team, which had been highly politicised.
A more partisan College
The CEPS researcher said the growing political factor was a result of the increased role played by the Commission president since the entry into force of the Treaty of Nice. This tendency was further strengthened by preparations for the Lisbon Treaty, and all EU governments have just sent commissioners from their own majority parties to the new EU executive, he explained.
This had not been the case in the Barroso I team, where a number of commissioners were appointed across party lines on the basis of their capabilities and expertise, the researcher added.
"I am not sure that this is a negative development. I can imagine that this can lead to some frictions and contestation of decisions, but this is the way things work in any government. In the end it could be good also in terms of increasing the visibility of the Commission," Incerti argued, as European citizens would be able to see what the commissioners are fighting for and how the EU executive works. Even controversy can contribute to making the EU more transparent and understandable, he explained.
As for political parties working more closely with commissioners - bridging the gap with the European Parliament - Incerti said this could also prove to be a positive development. It would only be welcome for the Parliament to become a more powerful actor and interact more closely with the Commission, in the view of improving efficiency, he argued.
"We may have a directive put on the table by the Commission which may go through the legislative process more smoothly, because the Parliament would have been involved from the beginning, and because the political groups are also the bridge with national governments," the CEPS researcher elaborated.
Some commissioners 'more equal' than others
As for commissioners taking input from national governments, a now-infamous remark by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who described Romanian Commissioner-designate Dacian Cioloş as "the second French commissioner," made it obvious that governments indeed see their commissioners as their highest representatives in Brussels, Incerti said.
"In a sense, it is understandable […] But of course there is a problem of having too many commissioners and not enough work for them to do," the analyst said.
He added the Barroso II team was likely to see the emergence of a new phenomenon in the form of "senior" commissioners such as High Representative for Foreign Affairs Catherine Ashton taking the lead over "junior" colleagues, such as the Czech commissioner for enlargement, the Latvian commissioner for development, and the Bulgarian commissioner for humanitarian aid and crisis responses.
