ANALYSIS: Where will Barroso's new commission steer Europe?

By Ben Nimmo Feb 9, 2010, 15:52 GMT

Strasbourg, France - The European Union's new executive officers have taken the helm: The question now is which way they will steer it.

Approved by the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday, the 27-member European Commission is to spend the next five years guiding the EU towards key decisions on issues such as economic reform, climate change and the reform of the bloc's huge annual budget.

With the EU struggling to emerge from recession, its currency under pressure and the openness of its shared market under attack in a number of member states, analysts say that the commission's first challenge will be to defend what it has already achieved.

'Upholding the single-market rules and dealing with the economic situation will clearly be major challenges for (Commission President Jose Manuel) Barroso and his team,' Piotr Kaczynksi, an expert on EU politics at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels, told the German Press Agency dpa.

The problems facing the euro are likely to take centre stage in the early days, as the commission struggles to contain the fallout from Greece's budget problems.

There is a 'serious risk' that Greece's financing problems will spill over to other euro countries such as Portugal and Spain, the outgoing economics commissioner, Joaquin Almunia, said Tuesday.

National calls to brake outsourcing within the EU in order to preserve local jobs are also set to make waves, with the commission fighting to resist that pressure and make the EU's single market more effective.

'The commission cannot simply have a defensive agenda ... but should also try to bring in a more pro-active agenda to promote cross-border initiatives,' said Antonio Missiroli, director of studies at the European Policy Centre (EPC) thinktank in Brussels.

Simultaneously, the EU, including the commission, is debating how to make the economy more competitive by 2020, with debate focusing on the question of how to make member states stick to their pledges.

'The commission will try and connect the dots somehow so the strategy is not just a wish list ... Penalties would be controversial but rewards would make sense, for example by somehow linking regional aid to progress on the 2020 targets,' Missiroli said.

The commission is also set to be in charge of EU climate-change policy as member states put in place an agreement on cutting their greenhouse-gas emissions to 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020.

Emissions cuts are unpopular in Europe at a time of deep economic crisis, leaving Climate Action Commissioner Connie Hedegaard (Denmark) a stiff challenge.

'The commission will have to monitor that (implementation) carefully - we can't have a disregarded law,' Kaczynski said.

The debate is likely to generate hot air aplenty, as Barroso has also said that the new commission will push to make transport much more climate-friendly, in the face of industry resistance.

That is likely to provide heavy work for Hedegaard and her colleagues in charge of transport, industry and energy, Siim Kallas (Estonia), Antonio Tajani and Guenther Oettinger (Germany).

The proposals 'will be highly controversial and disputed, and will not be easy for all to swallow,' Kaczynski said.

And in the longer term, the commission is expected to launch a debate on the EU's 130-billion-euro (178-billion-dollar) annual budget, an issue all but guaranteed to put the EU's budget commissioner, Janusz Lewandowski (Poland), in the spotlight.

'The first two to three years of this mandate will be taken up by the (budget) debate,' Missiroli said.

But the hardest task faces the commission's new vice-president in charge of foreign affairs, Catherine Ashton.

She is expected to set up from scratch the EU's new diplomatic service, coordinate between the commissioners for enlargement, trade, development and emergency aid, and personally represent the EU's 27 member states as their effective 'foreign minister.'

Brussels insiders are already calling that mission too much for one woman to handle.

'She has to learn to delegate effectively: you can't be the head of a large bureaucracy, a roving diplomat and the coordinator between 27 capitals and Washington, Moscow and Beijing all at the same time,' Missiroli said.