Barroso vreest EU zonder slagkracht door onzekerheid over Verdrag van Lissabon (en)
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso wants Europe to be a leading world power but believes its institutional problems may prevent it from negotiating on the key issue that could help achieve this goal.
On the brink of possible re-appointment for a second term as head of the EU executive, Mr Barroso says he fears that ongoing uncertainty over the Lisbon Treaty, the EU's new set of internal rules, could mean he is saddled with a lame-duck institution at an international summit on climate change in December in Copenhagen.
"I fear the commission will not be there with its full competence politically and even legally," he told EUobserver and other media on Friday (4 September).
The uncertainty stems from the fact that even if he gets parliament's approval next week for a further five years in office, there is no guarantee that the Lisbon Treaty will have been approved by all four of the remaining member states by the end of October, when the current commission's term expires.
"I am worried about this ... It is not good for any institution to have too long periods of interim," said Mr Barroso, who believes that the way in which the EU deals with climate change and the current economic crisis will be crucial to its future standing in the world.
Speaking ahead of this week's negotiations with the political groups in the European Parliament, where he will try to win support for a second five-year mandate, Mr Barroso said that by 2014 he would like to see the EU emerge as "a more confident global power and that internally [it] will have been able to exit from this crisis with a competitive economy and with durable growth."
He counts the EU's climate change goals and presiding over a 27-member commission as his most important achievements since 2004.
The pragmatist
The Portuguese centre-right politician put climate change at the top of his political agenda mid-way through his term after becoming persuaded of the economic value of tackling the issue.
This pragmatism, and a tendency to choose a policy path of least resistance, has been at the root of much of the criticism coming from his opponents in the European Parliament, who since July have been dragging their feet over his re-nomination.
But Mr Barroso says he is happy to set the bar at the level of what he believes can be realistically achieved with the club's 27 member states.
"If you put a vision without a means to follow it, then you don't succeed," he said, adding that he prefers "pragmatic agreements" to "empty rhetoric."
Questioned on next month's referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland, this practical approach shone through. He said he approved of the Irish business community's campaign that people should say Yes for jobs, noting that when the "emotional argument" does not work, the "rational one" might win through.
The 53-year old former Portuguese prime minister also refuted the other main strand of criticism - that he is star-struck by big member states, calling the accusation "unfounded and inaccurate."
He pointed out that he has been awarded the highest honors of both Estonia and Lithuania and quoted an unnamed leader from a smaller member state as telling him in June: "We support you because you treated my country like a superpower."
Expanding animatedly on the theme, he said that the commission has in the past been there to help Greece with its forest fires, to help Malta with its immigration issues and to help those countries affected by last winter's gas crisis.
"I had more fights with big member states than small member states," he said.
His own work
Having been given the support of national governments in June, he now has to persuade reluctant left-wing and liberal MEPs that he should become the third person in EU history to hold the commission presidency post two times.
His future political plans, drawn up at the MEPs' behest and published last week, contained something for all the main political groups. Mr Barroso emphasised that he and not his staff wrote the document and pledged to try and find the broadest support possible for the plan.
Careful to make overtures to parliament, an institution he underestimated in 2004 when there was a kerfuffle over one commission nominee, Mr Barroso spoke of making the commission political but not partisan and said he would "regularly" go to parliament "to respond to whatever questions are put to me."
But he also challenged the 736-member assembly to support him. "You cannot call for a strong Europe without having a commission in full power and president in full power," he said.