Portraits of incoming European commissioners

Herewith thumbnail sketches of the 25 members of the new European Commission, taking up office Monday after a three-week delay due to a standoff with EU lawmakers.

The portraits start with Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso, followed by the five vice-presidents, and then the other commissioners listed in alphabetical order by country name.
  
    COMMISSION PRESIDENT
  
   -- Incoming commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, 48, has had a colourful career stetching from student-era Maoism to middle-of-the-road conservatism and champion of transatlantic ties.

Barroso was one of the youngest members of a Portuguese government when appointed to a top interior ministry post at the age of 29, and rose rapidly through the ranks to become prime minister in 2002.

He was chosen as a compromise candidate to head the EU executive after the intitial frontrunner backed by France and Germany, Belgium's Guy Verhofstadt, was deemed too federalist by countries like Britain.

His formidable negotiating skills were a key attraction in choosing a successor to Romano Prodi: in his past life Barroso helped engineer the Angolan peace accord and sustained the independence movement in East Timor.

Critics have been less impressed by those skills during the standoff with EU lawmakers over his new Brussels team, which has seen a three-week delay in the Commission taking office.

Many said he badly misjudged the mood. When he finally takes office he will be closely watched to see if his firm political grip is in place at the EU helm.
  
   VICE PRESIDENTS
  
   -- Estonia's Siim Kallas, 56, is a former prime minister who played a key role when the Baltic country regained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

The finance graduate will serve as a vice president under Barroso in charge of administrative affairs, audit and anti-fraud policy. As prime minister from 2002, Kallas guided his country through a crucial period in the run-up to its entry into both the EU and NATO this year.

Frenchman Jacques Barrot, 67, who began his career in politics in the late 1960s, is another member of the departing commission retained by Barroso, who transferred him from regional policy to transport.

He was for two years leader in the French National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, of the ruling center-right Union for a Popular Movement before he joined the commission in March to replace Michel Barnier, who had been named French foreign minister in a government reshuffle.

Barrot previously served as social affairs minister in the conservative government of former French prime minister Alain Juppe. He is married and has three children.

Guenter Verheugen, 60, the indefatigable commissioner for enlargement for the past five years, is one of six members of the departing team retained by Barroso. He takes over the heavyweight portfolio of enterprise and industry. A member of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats since 1982, Verheugen took obvious pride in shepherding eight former Soviet bloc countries into the EU and even earned the nickname "Uncle Guenter" in Poland, where he enjoyed a reputation as a man who is strict but fair. "Only a minority understands what we have done in the last 10 years," Verheugen told AFP earlier this year, complaining of lukewarm public enthusiasm for the biggest expansion in EU history.

Italy's Franco Frattini, who replaced controversial Rocco Buttiglione at the last minute, is set to be one of the youngest members of the incoming EU executive line-up. The Tuscan-born 47-year-old, who has been a suave foreign minister, forged a reputation for hard work in the backrooms of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, quickly becoming a leading light.

But this could also prove a burden, with one MEP commenting before his confirmation hearing that it was a bit like setting a poacher to look after the gamekeeper. Unlike Buttiglione, a conservative Catholic family man with four daughters, Frattini is the separated father of an 11-year-old daughter. His action-man hobbies include climbing, skiing, sailing and scuba diving.

Margot Wallstroem, 50, outgoing commissioner for the environment and second-in-command in the new EU executive as senior vice president, has a long career in politics, both in the Swedish parliament and in government. From 1988 to 1998, she was first minister of civil affairs, then of culture and finally of social affairs. She also has broad experience outside politics, notably as chief executive of a regional television network -- experience that could serve her well in
her new brief of communications supremo for the Brussels commission.  Wallstroem, married with two sons, is hugely popular in Sweden and seen by many as a future prime minister.  

OTHERS (IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER OF COUNTRY)

   -- Austrian former foreign minister Benita Ferrero-Waldner, 55, will take charge of external relations and neighbourhood policy in the new EU executive. A lawyer by training, she spent 12 years in the private sector before joining the diplomatic service. She led Austria's campaign against EU sanctions imposed when Joerg Haider's far-right party joined the government in 2000. The polyglot then became her country's first female foreign minister,
notably working to restore often-fraught relations between Austria and Israel.
  
   -- Louis Michel, 56, earned the enmity of the US government for being one of Europe's most outspoken opponents of the war in Iraq when serving as Belgium's foreign minister. The outspoken politician has moved a few blocks away to take charge of the Brussels commission's development and cooperation department, where he is dispensing the EU's huge budget of aid for the developing world. A fervent integrationist, he has consistently upbraided the EU for failing to take a higher political profile on the world stage.
  
   -- Marcos Kyprianou of Cyprus, due to take up the EU health and consumer protection brief, is a respected politician in his divided homeland noted for his conciliatory style in the hotbed of the island's politics. Born in 1960 in the southern port town of Limassol, he is a lawyer by profession with a masters from Harvard and post graduate studies completed at Cambridge University. He is not married. Kyprianou recently took a course to brush up on his French, putting him among a minority of new commissioners who can speak French confidently. His late father Spyros Kyprianou was Cyprus' president between 1977-88.
  
   -- Former Czech prime minister Vladimir Spidla, 53, who will be in charge of EU employment and social affairs, has a reputation in his own country as a colourless workaholic, rising before 6:00am and starting his day with a jog in the park near his official residence. But Spidla, who is proudly pro-European and speaks fluent German and French, is respected as a clean politician in a country still tarred with corruption. After the 1989 Velvet Revolution, he was a founder member of the Social Democratic party and joined the party's leadership in 1992 before being elected to parliament four years later.  

   -- Mariann Fischer Boel, 61, a liberal member of parliament in Denmark since 1990 and minister of agriculture since November 2001, will continue to oversee farm policy as commissioner for agriculture, a post which accounts for half the EU budget. Fischer Boel, one of eight women on Barroso's team and the only commissioner with any experience of agriculture, is married to a farmer and is part owner of the family land -- something that has exposed her to criticism. According to reports, her business has received more than 52,000 euros in EU subsidies this year and she has been accused of not coming out strongly enough against agricultural handouts. But EU lawyers say they see no conflict of interest over her ownership of the farm.
  
   -- Olli Rehn of Finland, due to take over the EU enlargement brief, is already a Brussels veteran, having been an EU lawmaker after Finland's 1995 EU entry, and head of cabinet in Finland's former EU commissioner Erkki Liikanen. The 42-year-old is a former academic with a doctorate in international political economy from Oxford, and was previously a professor of political science at Helsinki University. Before being appointed to Brussels, Rehn served as an adviser to Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen following their party's victory in the 2003 general elections. He is married and has a daughter.
  
   -- Stavros Dimas, the new environment commissioner, is a 63-year old lawyer and economist with Wall Street experience and a long-standing member of Greece's ruling conservative New Democracy party. In the previous EU commission, Dimas replaced Anna Diamantopoulou as
Greece's representative when she left to take up a seat in parliament for the defeated socialist party PASOK. Dimas was part of Greece's conservative-led governments in 1977-1981 and 1989-1993, notably as trade, agriculture and industry minister. He was part of Greece's negotiating team in the country's accession talks to the then European Community that led to the country's membership in 1981.
  
   -- Hungary's Laszlo Kovacs, an economist and former communist, is set to take up the tax portfolio after being reshuffled by Barroso following his failure to impress EU lawmakers with his command of the energy brief.  Leftwing EU lawmakers alleged a smear campaign against the 65-year-old former foreign minister and Socialist party chief after Internet pictures emerged depicting him as a communist militia member. Kovacs said he had "nothing to be ashamed of," and explained his initial "nightmare" performance before the EU parliament by a short night's sleep after a political crisis at home the day before. Kovacs led the Socialists to consecutive victories in the 2002 general election and the 2003 local ballots, but lost support after the party's poor showing in European elections in June.
  
   -- Former Irish finance minister Charlie McCreevy, who takes up the key EU internal market brief, is well-qualified to keep a grip on economic reforms, having overseen his homeland's transformation into a so-called Celtic Tiger. It was McCreevy's tax cuts which helped fuel an Irish boom fed by huge US investment, a high-tech revolution and also substantial EU aid for a country which not many years ago languished in the economic doldrums. Even if the gap between rich and poor has widened over his time in office, Ireland now enjoys one of the lowest unemployment rates in the EU -- an example which 54-year-old McCreevy will be keen to trumpet.
   
   -- Andris Piebalgs, coming to Brussels to take up the energy portfolio, was picked to replace Latvia's initial nominee Ingrida Udre after she failed to impress EU lawmakers, notably because of her euroskeptic views. The 47-year-old, who has served as education and finance minister in his Baltic homeland, is no stranger to the EU: he has also served as ambassador to
Brussels and to Estonia. Since May 1 he has been managing the office of Sandra Kalniete, Latvia's first EU nominee to the EU after the small former Soviet state joined the bloc. Piebalgs is is married and has three children.
  
   -- Lithuania's Dalia Grybauskaite, 48, served as finance minister from 2001 until her appointment to Brussels as budget commissioner. A black belt in karate, she had a reputation as a backer of strict fiscal policy and on several occasions opposed plans to increase funds to particular social groups, such as farmers. A graduate of Leningrad (now St Petersburg) University, she was the deputy head of the team of diplomats that negotiated Lithuania's EU membership and held posts as deputy foreign and deputy finance minister.
  
   -- Luxembourg's Viviane Reding, 53, switches from education and culture in the outgoing commission to take charge of the information society and media. A journalist, she was elected to the Luxembourg parliament aged only 28 after attaining a doctorate in social sciences from the Sorbonne in Paris. She may be disappointed in her comparatively low-profile brief in the new EU executive, having asked Barroso publicly for a top-tier job such as competition or the internal market.
  
   -- Malta's Joe Borg should be well-suited to the fisheries brief and maritime affairs brief he is set to take up in Brussels, coming from the smallest and arguably the most sea-dependent nation in the EU. A trained lawyer and former Maltese central bank governor, he was a key architect of his tiny island state's bid to join the EU, rising through the diplomatic ranks to become foreign minister in 1999. The 52-year-old, who did post-graduate studies in European law in Wales, is married with two children.
  
   -- The commissioner for competition policy, former Dutch transport minister Neelie Kroes, 63, was once famously dubbed the most powerful woman in The Netherlands by the Financial Times. Although she left the Dutch political arena 15 years ago, Kroes has remained in the public eye promoting transport and sitting on the boards of several high-profile companies. Her corporate links, however, have landed her in trouble with the European Parliament, some of whose members say she cannot guarantee her independence in sensitive anti-trust cases. In response, Kroes has abandoned all board positions and sold all her shares, while promising never again to work in the private sector.The daughter of a director of a Rotterdam transport firm, Kroes studied economics in 1960s when it was unusual for a woman to do so, before entering parliament as a Liberal in 1971. She oversaw the partial privatization of the Dutch postal service in 1980.
  
   -- Danuta Huebner, 56, the new commissioner for regional aid policy, criss-crossed her native Poland to drum up support for EU membership before a referendum in June last year, and played a key role in the closing stages of negotiations to join the bloc on May 1. An economist, she previously negotiated Poland's entry to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in 1994 after the fall of communism. With no party affiliation, she became minister for European integration in 2001 in the leftist government of Leszek Miller. She is thought by people who work with her to have a knack for compromise, although opponents of EU entry criticised her for pandering to Brussels and neglecting Poland's interests.
  
   -- Slovakia's Jan Figel, who takes up the EU's education and training portfolio, negotiated his country's entry into the bloc. The 44-year-old father of four is a member of the Christian-Democrat Movement, which strongly defends Slovakia's Catholic traditions. The party has campaigned for limits on abortions and is hostile to gay rights. Figel served as deputy foreign minister between 1998 and 2002 before heading the Slovak parliament's foreign affairs committee and taking charge of the EU accession negotiating team.
  
   -- Slovenia's Janez Potocnik, 46, takes charge of the EU's science and research brief, which looks set to gain in importance given Barroso's intention to place economic competitiveness at the heart of his agenda. Potocnik headed a variety of economic think-tanks before joining the
government in 2001.   From January 2002 he was the minister for European affairs, acting as the
chief negotiator for his country's accession to the EU.
  
   -- Joaquin Almunia, 56, the Spaniard re-appointed as economic and monetary affairs commissioner, will have his work cut out smoothing relations between Brussels and member states over the stability pact propping up the euro. Almunia replaced fellow Spaniard Pedro Solbes in April, since when he has tried to steer a path between countries that feel the pact unfairly restricts their hand at times of economic downturn, and Brussels which insists the rules
governing budgetary policy must be strictly applied. A married father of two, Almunia is a member of Spain's ruling Socialists and was the youngest minister in Socialist governments in the 1980s. He lectured for a while after leaving public office in 1991, but returned three years later to arliament and headed the parliamentary budget commission until earlier this year.
  
   -- Britain's Peter Mandelson, 51, who assumes the EU's powerful trade brief, is a close ally of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, yet remains one of the nation's most controversial political figures. Twice he rose to take important cabinet posts under Blair, twice he was forced to resign due to scandals.   In his third appointment to a high-profile political portfolio, Mandelson will be the EU's chief negotiator at a critical juncture in the current round of liberalisation talks at the World Trade Organisation.  Mandelson first rose to prominence during the late 1980s as director of communications for Britain's Labour Party, then languishing in opposition. He helped mastermind an image turnaround for the party, but in the process acquired the reputation of an accomplished behind-the-scenes fixer and spin-doctor, earning him the unflattering nickname of "the prince of darkness".