Critics of European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso accuse him of a lack of personality, but it cannot be said that he lacks a sense of humour.

Interviewed at the time that there were calls from domestic quarters in the United Kingdom for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty rather than simply tabling it for parliamentary consent, Barroso gestured with exaggerated indignation and a twinkle in his eye that the British had gone so far as to "cut off the head of their king" for the sake of parliament’s power, so why did they now want not to trust their MPs?

To hear him speak, it was as if Charles I had laid his neck on the chopping block just a week or so previously, rather than more than three centuries ago.
How one sees the performance of Barroso, who has been EC President since 2004, has much to do with how one sees the European Union.

Eurosceptics, especially those on the island that decapitated the first Charles, might see the former Portuguese prime minister in much the same mould. Charles’s downfall, after all, was occasioned very much by those who saw him as a despot beyond accountability and grasping for power to the disadvantage of other representatives of the body politic.

However, the harshest criticisms of Barroso have come, of late, from those who see him as ineffectual in the face of power. The common thread of these criticisms is that Barroso is not one to speak truth to power, but rather to repeat whatever it is that power has just said.

In an opinion piece published on May 22, Reuters columnist Paul Taylor accused Barroso of "sycophancy" towards the big three EU powers – the UK, France and Germany.
"To watch him fawning next to Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy or Angela Merkel at a news conference can be a toe-curling embarrassment," Taylor said.
Barroso, Taylor said, had often been "timid, feeling shackled by a lack of consensus" on economic and social policy, financial regulation and reform of the EU budget.

Writing in the Financial Times, Wolfgang Munchau, in an article headlined: "Another five years for Barosso? How depressing" said that Barroso had spent most of the past few years on his bid for re-election rather than on doing his job.

"Barroso is among the weakest Commission presidents ever, a vain man who lacks political courage," Munchau said.

"I suspect his big idea for the next five years is to relaunch the Lisbon agenda, and waste another five or 10 years on voodoo economics, and diverting attention from real and urgent policy issues, such as a more coherent system of economic crisis management," he said.

But while Barroso is said to have the backing of Merkel and Brown, and at least is said not to be opposed vehemently by Sarkozy and Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, reports have it that a second Barroso term might not happen without first facing some opposition.

Current opinion polls say that the centre-right will continue to form the largest bloc in the European Parliament after the June 2009 elections, with the socialists trailing second. Against this background must be weighed reports that the socialists are hoping to find a way to block Barroso II.
Martin Schulz, current leader of the socialists in the EP, has said that if the social democrats become the biggest bloc, it will by no means be automatic that Barroso gets a second term.

This raises the question of alternatives, and although the name of Schulz himself has been mentioned as a possible contender, there is no confirmation attached to that.
One possible scenario is a second attempt by Guy Verhofstadt, who in 2004 had the backing of France and Germany but whose candidacy was eliminated by the UK and others.

A recent article by Guido Montani, vice president of the Union of European Federalists, endorsed the idea of Verhofstadt making another attempt.

Montani said that the proposal had been put forward to nominate Verhofstadt as the candidate of a coalition bringing together the European Parliament’s liberals, greens and socialists. (In this, there certainly would be backing from one MEP poised for re-election, prominent Green Daniel Cohn-Bendit, who is on the record as describing Barroso as "useless". Cohn-Bendit, backing the idea of an anti-Barroso coalition among the Greens and socialists, said that Barroso had a way of "always agreeing with the last important person that he spoke to").

Of course, it is crucial to note that it is the European Council that nominates the President of the EC, not the European Parliament. MEPs might be able possibly to delay a nomination procedurally but it is doubtful that they could really block the candidate that the European Council wants.

Whatever the political chances, however, Montani issued a ringing endorsement of Verhoftstadt, whom he described as "in favour of the United States of Europe. He is in favour of a federal budget, a federal foreign policy and the removal of the veto right. A public debate, in the European Parliament, on the choice of the President of the European Commission is also a debate on the federalist future of the European Union".

Another name frequently mentioned, albeit with no official confirmation, is that of Denmark’s Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, a socialist and, unsurprisingly, ardent critic of Barroso.

With expectations that the European Council will in June name its choice for the EC President (unless, as Sarkozy has hinted, such a decision is delayed), and that the nomination will be put to the European Parliament in July, at the moment there are few ringing endorsements of Barroso, at least any that reflect the same passion as the words spoken against him by his detractors.

This may strike at least some as odd, given that Barroso has not been without his moments as a visionary.
Before the outcome of the 2008 presidential elections in the United States, Barroso sent a letter to the "next president of the US", a letter that bore no personal name as the addressee.

In the letter, Barroso spelt out his vision for an Atlantic Agenda for Globalisation on a range of issues from climate change to foreign policy.

"I think you will agree that while many files will be waiting for you in your in-tray when you arrive in the Oval Office, the one marked ‘Relations with the European Union’ deserves to be kept close. The relationship has achieved great things in the past. But set on the road of modernization and engagement with the wider world, it has the potential to achieve even greater things in the future," Barroso said.

But even from Barroso himself, there seems little in the way of how he sees his unique selling points in a candidacy for a second term, barring some comments he made in interviews in mid-May in which he spoke of the need for "institutional stability" because of the seriousness of the economic crisis, along with the need to be ready for the G8 meeting in Italy in July and the G20 summit scheduled to be held in the US in September.

From his record, it seems unlikely that Barroso – whose third name "Durao" is Portuguese for "tough guy" – would be dismayed by the attempts to rally opposition to a new term. When he was prime minister of Portugal, even though observers do not remember him as especially effective and from those times level accusations of pliability similar to those put against him today, he effected some difficult economic reforms against the opposition of the socialists.

Further, it was Barroso who, as Portuguese prime minister, hosted a meeting on the island of Terceira that was attended by then US president George Bush, then UK prime minister Tony Blair and then Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar that set the scene for the 2003 "coalition of the willing" invasion of Iraq – a memory that, on its own and apart from a lingering sense of vendetta among socialists for his economic reforms, may want his detractors keen to oust him from his position of the leadership of Europe.

The Presidency, in EC steps
The European Council, of the leaders of the 27 EU member states, vote by qualified majority to come up with a nomination.
This nomination should, although it is not yet a formal requirement, take into account the outcome of the European Parliament elections – which in 2009, it seems, would be no bar to Barroso winning another term should predictions of a centre-right majority in the EP prove correct.

Provided approval is given by the EP, the President is in office for a five-year term and must put forward the European Commission. In turn, the EP can oust the European Commission and the EC President from office by a vote of censure.

Once in office, the EC President leads the EC and has power of approval over EC policies; the EC also initiates EU legislation.

The EC President represents the EC in many forums but shares the foreign policy role with the President of the European Council (the leader of the country holding the rotating presidency of the EU) and the foreign policy chief of the EU.

For those considering the job in the long term, the package includes a salary of just less than 267 000 euro, a housing allowance, chauffeur-driven car and a personal staff of about 20, but no jet or official residence. Also to be taken into account in long-term planning is the fact that, depending on the outcome of many factors within individual EU countries, the post of EC President may one day give way to that of a permanent President of the European Council (a "president of Europe" as some see it).