Who will feature in the next European Commission, to take office in 2009?

Well, for starters, it is widely thought that José Manuel Barroso wants a second term running the show. So how does the Portuguese liberal re-apply for his own job?

A first task, as one diplomat told me, is for Barroso to leave a legacy from his existing term in office. Prodi, the previous president, oversaw the “big bang” enlargement of the EU to take in 10, mostly ex-Communist member states. Delors’ crowning achievement was the creation of the single market. Will Barroso’s legacy be his controversial legislative efforts to counter climate change?

Barroso was appointed to his job in 2004 after emerging as a compromise candidate, and many assume that Merkel, Sarkozy and Brown, the current crop of leaders in big EU power centres, will continue to back him.

But is that enough? He’ll certainly help his cause by bolstering his “social” credentials. After all, Barroso has faced persistent claims that he’s failed to deliver enough in this area - see this open letter from Martin Schulz, leader of the socialists in the European parliament. So it’s interesting to learn that the Commission plans to unveil a big “Social Agenda Plus” package in June.

Barroso must surely still be haunted by the mess that marked the start of his administration in 2004, when he was forced to withdraw his original team rather than it face certain rejection by members of the parliament. Underlining that his is a social Commission, and that he is a leader for all, would certainly help his cause in the chamber and beyond.

The daily press briefing at the European Commission’s star-shaped Berlaymont HQ in Brussels is an event rarely noted for its humour.

Yesterday’s menu, for example, included questions to the Commission on the subjects of organised crime in Bulgaria, a court judgment on Sweden’s alcohol taxation rules, the Macedonian elections, and Greek asylum policy, among others.  

So you might see why a bizarre exchange yesterday between journalists and a spokesperson over the age of a new, female commissioner was rather out of the ordinary.

A reporter said that she was writing a profile of Androulla Vassiliou, the new Cypriot commissioner responsible for health policy, and had failed to find out her exact age from her office.

In fact, the journalist said that she was told that it was very rude to ask the age of a Cypriot commissioner, but that she could say that Mrs Vassiliou was “around 65″

The spokesperson’s response at the podium was that it was indeed rude in the commissioner’s culture to ask a woman’s age.

Next came a brief exchange about whether the answer could be found on the commissioner’s online CV - it couldn’t as of Tuesday night- and if the reluctance to disclose Mrs Vassiliou’s exact age was in line with the Commission’s transparency rules. 

Tricky. 

Can national cultural mores be transported to Brussels, capital of the 27-country Europe?

Do we need to know a commissioner’s exact age? What difference does it make that, in this case, the commissioner is female? 

And does the public have a right to know such details about EU officials who make big decisions over European citizens and industry?

A colleague visited recently from the FT’s London mothership, and a few of us took him out to sample some hearty Belgian fare.

Over his beer and stoemp (bangers and mash, Belgian-style) he asked who in the Brussels machine was the ultimate dinner party guest. A member of the European parliament, a national ambassador to the EU, or a European commissioner?

The consensus was that with Brussels dancing to the beat of the European Commission (the EU executive), commissioners were at the top of the pecking order.

Granted, not all commissioners’ roles are equal. Holding the EU education and training portfolio (where the union has only a small role)  hardly has the same cachet as, say, the competition supremo job which gives Neelie Kroes, the incumbent, the power to take on companies such as Microsoft.

But now this Commission has entered its final year and a half, and some of its members have already jumped ship. Markos Kyprianou, formerly health commissioner, has returned to Cyprus to become its foreign minister. Franco Frattini, justice commissioner, is on unpaid leave to participate in this month’s elections in his native Italy.

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In many ways, continental Europe is increasingly an area without borders (viz the euro single currency, cheaper cross-border mobile phone calls, the enlarged passport-free travel zone).

But not everything works seamlessly.

I thought about this because of a fascinating story (warning - this is quite a large PDF file, but it has great pics) in the Bulletin, an English-language magazine in Brussels, on the subject of joined towns on the Belgo-Dutch border.

The story on Baarle-Hertog and Baarle-Nassau highlights the quirks of residents’ lives as they constantly flit across two countries.

It details how the frontier runs through houses, shops and restaurants. People also have to grapple with varying tax systems, closing times and speed limits.

Apparently, women are able to choose the nationality of their child depending on the location of the room in which they give birth.

The story highlights this sad case: a body was discovered in a house on the border. Police from both sides had to cooperate to be certain that they didn’t encroach on the other’s territory, leading to evidence becoming invalid.

If you want to know more about the towns’ unusual situation, read this lively story, written in 2004 when the EU undertook its “big bang” enlargement.

The most fun stories to cover from Brussels are usually those about big, messy fights. And such scraps are all the juicier when Viviane Reding, pugnacious EU telecoms chief, is involved.

For a start, she sparks robust and outspoken responses from the industry.

“Belarus is better for business than Brussels,”a top telecoms executive claimed last week in connection with Reding’s most recent efforts to cut mobile phone fees.

This reminded me of an attack on Reding in 2006, when she revealed legislation to cap lucrative roaming charges: one operator likened the proposal to central planning in the ex-USSR.

Here was Brussels bringing a law that not only commanded popular support but also, rarely, won rave headlines in Europe’s most eurosceptic media. The Luxembourger took on the industry (companies such as Telefonica, Vodafone and more), and won, forcing them to slash the price of overseas mobile calls.

Evidently, the success emboldened her. Victory seems to be everything for Reding, a journalist-turned-politician who outfoxed heavyweight colleagues in the European Commission to pass the legislation.

But now she is fighting on multiple fronts in the fast-moving telecoms sector. With only a year or so left on the legislative timetable before the European parliament’s elections, her battle plan is hard to predict.

At the top of her to-do list is a drive to force operators to cut the fees they charge customers to send text messages and use mobile internet while abroad.

This seems a politically irresistible quest, especially when you see stories like this: “A couple have been hit with a bill of £11,000 after downloading four episodes of the sitcom Friends via a mobile phone.” Some operators have already reduced charges as a result of Reding’s call for action.

At the same time, Reding also seeks to re-write the telcoms rulebook, bigtime. She wants to establish an EU telecoms authority who wants a new EU uber-agency, (but what exactly would it do?) liberalise radio spectrum and boost Brussels’ powers over the telecoms sector. Oh yes, she’s also trying to give national authorities the right to break up some of Europe’s biggest telecoms companies.

Reding wants everything: no wonder the telcoms industry is bridling in response. It’s too early to know what she will win, and what she’ll lose in her quest to leave her mark. But there’ll be fights galore along the way.

An intriguing development here: it looks as if Britain has been cornered in a fight to settle two hugely controversial EU labour rules.

This would be more bad news for Gordon Brown, and infuriate some British employers.

To them, these laws  - one on temps’ rights, the other on the maximum working week - are a pet hate, a sign of Brussels meddling in the UK’s flexible labour market.

But many countries are keen to get agreement on the rules, which are stuck in a legislative deep freeze after years of delays.

If the plan - put forward this week by the Portuguese EU presidency - goes through, the UK would have to compromise on one of the laws.

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It is 2028. The ice caps are dwindling, Chelsea Clinton continues her parents’ presidential legacy in the White House…and Belgium still awaits a new federal government after elections in June 2007.

Yes, I’m joking. Belgium faces a very difficult situation right now, and many people hope it will get out of its impasse in the coming weeks. But how?

A quick recap: The linguistically-divided country has been without a new government since an election more than five months ago.

The francophone parties and the Flemish groups expected to make up a centre-right coalition just can’t agree on state reform, prompting concerns that the country could break up along its linguistic fault lines.

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Since you’re reading this, it’s not too much to assume that you’re interested in the blogsphere…

So you might want to know about a report - The online world - a new constituency - which comes out tomorrow. It’ll be posted on the website of a PR firm called Edelman.

Perhaps it is a little self-serving for a blog to write up this study. After all, it details the growing role of the medium. And yes, it can be tricky for a report to get the measure of these sorts of phenomena. Still, for what it’s worth, here are some of the core points: 

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And on it goes…

Belgium waits and waits for a new federal government, almost five months after the election. Next week, it is expected to break its record for the longest-ever talks to form a coalition.

This leaves everyone to muse about the linguistically-divided country’s future, and in particular, the claim that the Flemings of the wealthy (Dutch-speaking) north and the Walloons of the poorer, francophone south, barely know each other.

I suppose when your country has been (briefly) put up for sale on eBay, and the prime minister designate appears unwilling to sing the national anthem, you’re justified in questioning things? But is the doom and gloom making everyone become a bit too tough on themselves?

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One of the big upcoming stories in EU-land is the planned expansion of the union’s passport-free zone by the year-end.

It’s a tough task for the nine (almost all ex-Communist) countries to meet the criteria to join the Schengen area. (There are no internal frontier controls between member states that sign up to Schengen). In Wednesday’s paper, we wrote about the progress of the countries vying to join. The confidential report that we saw shows that a lot of work is still needed - especially on improving visa issuance. But some countries, notably Poland, have made great strides.

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