Brussels blog

With the European Union’s Lisbon treaty in deep trouble, some of the finest minds in Brussels are at work devising solutions to problems of which the general European public is wholly unaware. For example, the size and composition of the European Commission.

If the Lisbon treaty doesn’t come into force next year, the next Commission will have to be selected according to rules set out in the EU’s 2003 treaty of Nice. These state that when the EU has grown to include 27 countries (which it now has), the number of commissioners should be “less than the number of member-states”.

But Nice does not say how EU governments are to achieve the reduction. In the light of Ireland’s No to Lisbon, this gives ample scope for political and bureaucratic deal-making over coming months.

Fear of losing their commissioner played a part in the Irish voters’ rejection of Lisbon, but few seemed to understand that Ireland would be worse off under Nice. Lisbon contained a provision stating that, if all member-states agreed, they could abandon the commitment to reducing the Commission’s size and keep one commissioner per member-state. Before the Irish vote, many in Brussels had quietly assumed this was exactly what would happen after Lisbon took effect. By contrast, Nice has no such provision.

So if the Nice treaty remains in force next year, what can be done? One member-state has already proposed an answer. Cut the Commission in size, as Nice stipulates, but only from 27 to 26 members. Let the country which loses its commissioner take the job of High Representative for foreign policy (at present, Javier Solana of Spain). Let him or her attend Commission meetings. Hey presto! Everyone’s still in the room.

You have to admit, it’s an ingenious proposal. In fact, it’s so ingenious that it almost makes you ask, “Why bother with Lisbon, after all?” Which, of course, cannot possibly have been the question at the back of the mind of the country which floated the proposal … the UK!