Unlike the previous Commissions, where each of the five big countries had two commissioners who shared the same political culture and background, the new team will be composed of 25 members - each one with a different country and cultural background.
Marco Incerti, senior research fellow with CEPS (Centre for European Policy Studies) in Brussels, sees both pluses and minuses in the fact that the majority of the team looks set to be so high profile and so new on the Brussels scene.
"On the positive side it will look like an injection of fresh faces which will be seen as a sign of renewal in Brussels. The less technocratic and more political overall profile of the Barroso Commission will be further underlined by the highly political dossiers already placed on the Commission's table this autumn - the Turkey issue and the financial perspectives, which has potential to create a lot of problems," Incerti told EurActiv.
He went on to say that "the number of well known personalities (in their respective national contexts) will raise the visibility of the new Commission and help change the negative feeling of many people that they do not know who runs Brussels".
The downside, however, may be that not all the new faces were known for their brillant work at home, and being high profile is therefore not necessarily a good thing for the overall reputation of the Commission. Incerti notes that Vladimir Spidla was unpopular in the Czech republic. He also understands that Peter Mandelson is a somewhat controversial character in the UK, pointing out that the eurosceptic UK Indepence Party is likely to attack him by claiming that the "corrupted people end up in Brussels". The Irishman Charlie McCreevy, who pushed through a costly tax reform scheme w hen he was finance minister, is not very popular at home either.
Incerti also notes that the new high profile members may have a hard time not flashing there big egos: "I am not sure they will be able to keep a low profile. There is a risk of clashes and increased infighting".
Alfred Pijpers, a European affairs researcher from the Clingendael Institute, Netherlands, comments on the overall lack of experience and says that the lack of established team spirit may create difficulties in the early stages:
"It will require a lot of management capacity to build unity and a strong profile for this new team. Barroso will have to 'get 25 frogs into a wheelbarrow', as we say in Dutch. It will also be a tough job for Barosso to gain a strong position as a European personality. Remember Prodi - everybody said this professor had an excellent record, but only after a few months and a few mistakes (that were not even real mistakes) he was gone, member states went for him," Pijpers told EurActiv.
Pijpers notes that even if many of the new team do not have Brussels insider experience in shape of a former top EU official status (Lamy), or a background in the EP, some commissioners from the ten new Members States have led their countries' accession negotiations into the EU (H� and therefore have a good grounding in the nuts and bolts of the EU. He says some have held offices as ministers in their home countries, where some policy areas have become almost totally 'europeanised'. Such experience will also go a long way in their new job.
Stanley Crossick, founding chairman of EPC, The European Policy Centre, understands that Barroso does not want a supercommissioner: "that would make the President a lame duck," he told EurActiv. On the other hand, it would not be a bad idea to appoint a vice president for Lisbon, but without portfolio. The task of such a vice president could be to co-ordinate the 5-6 portfolios dealing with the Lisbon process.
Crossick is not too worried about the presence of 'big egos' in the new Commission but more concerned about a general weakening of the Commission because so few are staying (only three) which results in a big loss of experience. "The Commission lost most of its stars," says Crossick. He agrees that because of this the chemistry between the new EU-inexperienced commissioners and the Director generals of the DGs will be very important: "There should be a constructive tension between the political direction of the commissioners and the technical direction of the DGs".
Marco Incerti, from CEPS, predicts that the Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi's decision not to rename Mario Monti as commissioner could in fact help resolve the puzzle of distributing the big dossiers. Being too junior on the EU stage, Buttiglioni will not be able to claim the competition post as Monti could have, and this opens the way for French commissioner Barrot to get it, which means that Germany could then get the Internal Market portfolio. The trade portfolio could then go to the widely respected Danuta H� who is currently 'twinned' with Lamy.
