José Manuel Barroso ponders a second term as President of the European Commission.

Putting the boot into Barroso

On June 18 and 19, EU leaders are likely to support José Manuel Barroso’s candidacy for a second term as President of the European Commission. The former Portuguese prime-minister, however, is not a politician to everyone’s taste, as a swingeing profile in the Guardian demonstrates.

Published on 17 June 2009 at 17:10
José Manuel Barroso ponders a second term as President of the European Commission.

For the next few weeks, writes David Cronin, conversation in Brussels will turn around “what posts a smug cabal of overpaid and uninspiring men (and one or two women) will be able to wangle for themselves.” None more uninspiring, it would seem, than José Manuel Barroso, who now seeks a second term as Commission president. While his supporters suggest that “he enjoys a mandate of sorts” because affiliated to the centre right that won a majority of seats in the European election, Cronin points out that “not one person who cast a vote in any of the EU's 27 countries would have seen Barroso's name on a ballot paper.” Indeed, on the few occastions EU citizens have been given a say on his policies, Barroso has been “rebuffed”. Not only was the EU constitution he championed rejected in France and the Netherlands in 2005, but in its most recent incarnation, the Lisbon treaty, it was rejected by the Irish in 2008. Barroso, however, refused to accept the result and insisted the poll be reheld. Proof, argues Cronin, ( who goes on to attack the candidate’s record in financial, economic and environmental policy ) of his “contempt for democracy”.

COUNTERARGUMENT

The constant pragmatist

"I have spoken to José Manuel Barroso on several occasions," writes Konrad Niklewicz, Polish blogger and journalist at Gazeta Wyborcza. "On the basis of these conversations I will argue that this politician’s fundamental feature is pragmatism. He is not a visionary, but rather someone who modifies his plans depending on whether he can muster up enough support for them. If he sees that the majority of the national governments are against him – he refuses to bang his head against the wall. He withdraws. In this sense, Mr Barroso won’t ever be a new Delors. But nor will he ever be a new Jacques Santer – he will never get the Commission into political trouble. All in all, he may be a good enough Commission president at a time when the member state governments have snatched the EU’s reins from Brussels anyway. ‘I’m a reformist, not a revolutionary; a centrist, not a free-market fundamentalist,’ he has said about himself, as quoted by Reuters. He has a weakness for being in the spotlight. Every time one of his commissioners intends to unveil a reform that is favourable for consumers and backed by the national governments, Mr Barroso appears at the press conference and speaks first. But when the Commission is to announce some unpopular decisions – the commissioners can hardly count on Mr Barroso’s presence."

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