BRUSSELS: 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 Wednesday, 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 neo-liberal. He really believes what he says, that he is a reformist of the centre," 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 liberalise 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 number two, 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."
INTERNAL RESISTANCE: 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 labour unrest.
He has had to play fireman when statements by some of his 25-member executive ignited controversy, notably in France, that could jeopardise 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 liberalisation, says Barroso is doing his best but realises 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 said. "Everyone's trying to put this very unhelpful label 'neo-liberal' 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."
POLITICAL PROBLEMS: The 48-year-old centre-right leader has also faced political problems. He was a compromise third choice nominee last June when EU leaders clashed over who should succeed Prodi.
He made a strong initial impression as more articulate than the mumbling, professorial Prodi, but fell foul of EU lawmakers over his allocation of Commission portfolios. Barroso was forced to withdraw his team in October and resubmit a changed line-up to parliament, dropping two controversial nominees and switching two others.
His relations with the directly elected EU legislature have remained tense. All three left-wing groups - the Socialists, Communists and Greens - voted against the Commission's 2005 work programme, saying it was too neo-liberal in inspiration.
"This guy was chosen because he was a liberal, an Atlanticist and an inter-government a list," said Pervenche Beres, Socialist chairwoman of parliament's influential economic and monetary committee, a fierce critic. "He has shown his failure to understand the role of the Commission president day after day since his appointment." -Reuters
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