PROFILE: Jose Manuel Barroso, the EU's Mr Compromise

Sep 16, 2009, 10:28 GMT

Brussels - It is no accident that no serious rival stepped up to challenge Jose Manuel Barroso's bid for re-election as the head of the European Union's executive.

The 53-year-old Portuguese politician has been the master of the EU deal ever since he emerged as the bloc's compromise candidate when he was first appointed to head the European Commission in 2004.

His political career stretches back 17 years, to the time when he served as foreign minister for the centre-right PSD party from 1992- 95. Four years later, in 1999, he became party leader after a bitter power struggle.

   He became prime minister in 2002 despite opposition from within his own party, introducing austerity measures in a bid to bring the country out of recession. Those policies took his party to a stinging defeat in European Parliament elections in May 2004.

   But just one month later, an EU summit failed to nominate a new commission president after a bitter row in which Britain and France vetoed one another's top candidates.

The fiasco was a godsend for Barroso. Unmentioned in the run-up to the summit, he emerged after it as the EU's compromise candidate, taking up office in November 2004.

His initial bid to make the commission the driver of the EU's stalled 'Lisbon agenda' for economic modernization foundered among opposition from EU member states.

   A subsequent push to make the EU the world's most climate-friendly bloc proved more successful as the commission brought forward laws on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and boosting energy efficiency.

   But Barroso ran into fierce criticism in late 2008 for what opponents saw as a hesitant response to the global financial crisis.

   Advocates of deeper EU integration also accuse him of lacking the backbone to stand up to major member states.

   Supporters say that the commission president's job is to act as a broker between member states, not to pick fights with them over policies which will not win acceptance EU-wide.