José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president who wants to be reappointed next year to a second five-year term, has in recent days received two important but somewhat curious endorsements. The first was from Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, who has been sharply and publicly at odds with Barroso over the European Central Bank’s policies and over the European Commission’s handling of world trade negotiations.

The second was from Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s prime minister. The areas of potential or actual conflict between Italy and the EU are numerous to list here. But among them are Italian state aid to the near-bankrupt airline Alitalia, a rubbish collection crisis in Naples, and the treatment - or mistreatment - of Italy’s gypsy population.

To these one might add a warning from Berlusconi, issued on the eve of a summit of EU leaders in Brussels last month, about the European Commission. “We must no longer see public remarks by commissioners who create a lot of trouble for ministers [at national level],” he declared.

Barroso puts up with this needling from the likes of Berlusconi and Sarkozy because, if he wants the EU’s 27 government leaders to re-select him next year, he really has no choice. At the European Parliament there have been mutterings, even among the centre-right political forces to which Barroso belongs, that the former Portuguese prime minister should not be a shoo-in for reappointment.

Some legislators hold Barroso partly responsible for the two treaty crises that have dominated his term of office - the collapse of the EU constitutional treaty after the French and Dutch referendums of 2005, and the debacle of Ireland’s rejection last month of the Lisbon treaty.

Such accusations seem wildly unfair, but that’s politics for you. Barroso’s unofficial re-election campaign began to wobble after the Irish vote, but with the timely expressions of support from Sarkozy and Berlusconi it’s back on track - though at a political price we cannot yet know or calculate.