The 25 members of the European Union's new executive commission took office on Monday after a long delay, eager to tackle tough issues such as EU economic reform along with the sensitive brief of future Turkish EU membership.
Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso has his work cut out for him in the next five years in reforming a slowing European Union economy, and is keen on restarting an ambitious reform agenda which aims to make the now 25-nation bloc an economic powerhouse by the end of the decade.
But as the new commissioners sit down at their desks, they are already staring at a new potential crisis concerning the EU transport commissioner Jacques Barrot -- whose resignation, or at the very least suspension, the British leader of the European Liberal Democrats is demanding.
Graham Watson said Sunday that Barrot had not informed the European Parliament, Barroso or his predecessor Romano Prodi over legal proceedings in the 1990s that targeted his Social Democratic Center party, which Barrot headed at the time.
A French amnesty law forbids media from reporting the details of the legal procedure that Barrot faced. Barrot's resignation was also demanded by Britain's anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP), which provoked a storm by airing the allegations in the European Parliament last week.
Watson said in a statement he hoped the commission's reputation, an institution already shaken after a protracted row over Barroso's first-choice team which forced the president to withdraw his entire line-up at the eleventh hour late last month, would not suffer further damage.
The EU parliament had objected to the arch-conservative views on gays and women of Barroso's Italian choice for justice commissioner -- a dispute with legislators which eventually made him go back to the drawing board. On Friday, Barroso said he was confident of his new transport commissioner, a day after a UKIP MEP vehemently attacked him during a debate in parliament.
According to Barroso's office, the commission president has since requested that Barrot send him all the relevant documents, and that he make himself available to the parliament for questions as well. As he took office, Barroso in an interview highlighted economic growth across the European Union as essential in the years ahead. He told French daily Les Echos that his priorities were "everything that is linked to growth, everything to do with freedom and justice and which enables
the strengthening of Europe's role in the world."
The commission, he added, "can be a catalyst for reforms. We are there to help the 25 member states and if they want, we can win the battle for Europe's competitiveness."
On other issues, the outgoing commission last month recommended that EU leaders open membership negotiations with Turkey. The heads of government will decide whether to uphold the recommendation at a summit next month.
If they do, the new commission will be tasked with one of the most sensitive chapters of negotiation ever undertaken by the bloc as it tries to bring the Muslim-majority country into line with EU norms, a process that is expected to take many years.
By: N. Peter Kramer
