BRUSSELS, 1 March 2005 — After 100 days in the hot seat as European Commission president, Jose Manuel Barroso is still searching for a political compass and a coherent message, colleagues and critics say.
As the former Portuguese prime minister reaches the 100-day milestone on tomorrow, his efforts to dynamize a demoralized commission and give the European Union clearer leadership face resistance on several fronts.
Barroso took office with a clear priority akin to former US President Bill Clinton’s slogan “It’s the economy, stupid”.
But, scalded by a rough start with the European Parliament, he seems reluctant to affirm his liberal economic credo or risk taking on the big EU member states — Germany, France and Italy — which are slowest to reform their economies.
“He doesn’t think he is a right-wing neoliberal. He really believes what he says, that he is a reformist of the center,” a long-time Barroso aide says.
Perhaps that is why on the day he declared the drive for economic reform to boost growth and jobs to be his “big idea”, the commission beat a tactical retreat on key proposals to liberalize services and regulate chemicals in the face of opposition from France and Germany.
Then Barroso clouded his own message by saying the EU’s social and environmental agendas were just as important.
His chosen No. 2, Vice-President Margot Wallstrom, a Swedish Socialist, argues the EU executive should not be afraid to acknowledge it is more conservative than the previous commission headed by Italy’s Romano Prodi.
“It is correct (that) this commission ... is more right-wing than the Prodi Commission,” she told journalists. “That reflects political reality in Europe.”
Barroso inherited a battered institution whose influence has waned since its heyday under Jacques Delors, due to weaker leadership and repeated assaults by member governments.
France and Germany effectively tore up the bloc’s strict deficit limits in Prodi’s last year and Barroso is having to acquiesce in a loosening of the rules in an effort to preserve as much budget discipline as possible.
He also faces strong resistance from wealthy member states to commission proposals for an increase in the EU budget to cope with the costs of the bloc’s expansion to 25 members last year.
Aides say Barroso feels his drive to give the so-called Lisbon economic reform agenda top priority faces resistance from a statist commission bureaucracy as well as from member states keen to protect industrial champions or avoid labor unrest.
He has had to play fireman when statements by some of his 25-member executive ignited controversy, notably in France, that could jeopardize referendums to ratify the EU constitution. Reluctant to pick a fight with Berlin and Paris, Barroso has resisted calls by some commissioners to “name and shame” countries that drag their feet on meeting agreed targets.
Paul Hofheinz, president of the Lisbon Council, a privately funded pressure group for economic liberalization, says Barroso is doing his best but realizes that, like Delors, he needs Franco-German buy-in to succeed.
He’s got rid of a lot of the clutter in the commission’s message,” Hofheinz told Reuters.
“Everyone’s trying to put this very unhelpful label ‘neoliberal’ on him. He’s up against a mountain of prejudices and cliches and he’s going to have to somehow slay them, which he hasn’t done yet. But he’s very determined.”
