My colleague Philippe Ricard wrote a fine piece in Monday’s Le Monde about the scarcity of women candidates for top positions in the European Union - not just the first full-time president and the new foreign policy high representative, but the next 27-member European Commission.

He made the point that if only a few women are nominated to the new Commission, the European Parliament is likely to cause real trouble when the nominees appear for their confirmation hearings, expected to start in December.  The legislature does not have the legal authority to reject individual nominees, but in 2004 it demonstrated that it had the political strength to force their withdrawal when it torpedoed the appointment of Rocco Buttiglione, an Italian conservative, as justice commissioner.  Moreover, the parliament does have the legal power to reject the Commission in its entirety - the so-called “nuclear option”.

Many MEPs show every sign of itching for a repeat performance of the Buttiglione affair, which is fondly recalled in the assembly as a defining moment in the parliament’s evolution.  A scarcity of women would provide the perfect cover because it would be widely seen across Europe as inherently indefensible.

Could these tensions be eased by the appointment of a woman as the full-time president or the foreign policy supremo?  In principle, yes.  But officials from several countries have told me in recent days that the need for “gender balance” in the appointments is not regarded as of the same weight as the need for political balance (one person of the left, one of the right) - or the need to pick the best qualified candidates.

That last point sticks in the throat a bit, but there we are.

I was fortunate enough to speak with Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt on Tuesday about how the European Union is going about the task of choosing its first full-time president and its next foreign policy high representative.

The longer our conversation progressed, the more I realised how damaging to editorial standards, not to mention the people’s understanding of politics and government, are the competitive pressures on modern news organisations to be ahead of the rest of the pack.  For this particular EU story has, over the past few weeks, produced a cornucopia of nonsense as every broadcaster and newspaper has fallen over its rivals in a fruitless and fundamentally misguided attempt to show that it, and it alone, has got the lowdown.

Reinfeldt is co-ordinating the process of picking the president and foreign policy supremo, because Sweden holds the EU’s rotating presidency.  He told me that, although he had spoken informally with “a few leaders of large countries in the middle of last week”, he had not even started his formal consultations with his 26 fellow EU leaders until Monday.  So much for all the gossip before then.

Reinfeldt said he had managed to speak with 25 of the other leaders in the course of Monday and Tuesday, and he planned to speak with the 26th on Wednesday morning (it wasn’t entirely clear to me when he had consulted himself).  During this whole time, he had not once asked anyone if he or she was available as a candidate.

After he had completed his first round of consulations, he planned to start a second round on Thursday, with the aim of crafting the multiple political compromises needed to ensure that the choices can be formalised at a meeting of EU leaders over dinner in Brussels on November 19.

All of this illustrates that the selection process is much more delicate, and rather less advanced, than has been presented in the media up to now.  In particular, Reinfeldt made the important point to me that picking the foreign policy high representative and picking the first full-time president are not the same thing.  The presidency is a job wholly in the gift of the EU’s 27 national leaders, but the foreign policy position is not.

On the contrary, because its holder will serve as a European Commission vice-president, he or she must be acceptable to Commission president José Manuel Barroso and to the European Parliament.  Indeed, the parliament will conduct hearings soon into Barroso’s new Commission team, and it could in theory cause enough trouble to force the withdrawal of the foreign policy nominee.

At this point I can hear newsrooms around Europe echoing to the sound of editors asserting the media’s right to pointless speculation as a pillar of a free society, to be defended to the death - or at least as far as one’s lawsuit budget stretches.  But the more I listen to them, the more empty and self-righteous such arguments seem.

It would be better to show a little humility and paraphrase Winston Churchill:  “No one pretends that the modern media are perfect or all-wise.  Indeed, it has been said that the modern media are the worst form of all, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

The fuss over who will be the European Union’s first full-time president is obscuring the less sexy but potentially more important question of who will get the two or three most powerful jobs in the next European Commission.  A good many governments would prefer to see one of their nationals in a truly influential economic policymaking role in the Commission than occupying the EU presidency, which may turn out to be a more hollow job than once foreseen.

Commission president José Manuel Barroso says he will not nominate his new team until EU leaders have chosen their new head of foreign policy, a post that entitles its holder to a Commission seat.  Any country wanting a big economic portfolio at the Commission will therefore steer clear of putting forward a candidacy for the foreign policy job, because there is only one Commission seat for each nation.

Does this explain why the German government has proposed Günther Oettinger, prime minister of the state of Baden-Württemberg, as its next commissioner?  He doesn’t have obvious foreign policy credentials, so  the German idea is almost certainly to slot him into a top economic job.

Three portfolios in the outgoing Commission - competition commissioner, internal market commissioner and trade commissioner - stand out from the rest, because they bestow real power on their occupants.  They are the policy areas where Europe is most effective at speaking with one voice and exerting worldwide influence.  It would make sense for Germany, which was disappointed by the performance of its outgoing representative, Günter Verheugen, as industry commissioner, to want one of these jobs.

If the internal market portfolio is rejigged, perhaps in order to put a stronger focus on Europe’s response to the financial crisis, it is easy to imagine a scramble among the bigger EU countries to be put in charge of financial regulation.  France is said to be keen on getting something meaty like this (Michel Barnier, or perhaps Christine Lagarde?).  Of course, this would rule out the foreign policy position for a Frenchman - but Paris, better than most national capitals, knows which jobs in Brussels contain the beef and which the onions.

What about the UK?  The intriguing point here is that it would be extremely simple for Prime Minister Gordon Brown to quash the rumours that David Miliband, his foreign secretary, is manoeuvring to be the EU’s next foreign policy supremo.  All Brown would need to do is to announce that Catherine Ashton, the British EU trade commissioner, was being renominated to Barroso’s team.  Or Brown could name someone else.  Either way, it would instantly rule out Miliband as the head of EU foreign policy.

But Brown hasn’t done that.   It is anyone’s guess why.  But one explanation is that, with Tony Blair’s undeclared EU presidential bid far from certain of success, Brown needs other cards to play.  If Blair is the British government’s queen of hearts, Miliband is, you might say, the knave of spades.

Ask a minister in a European Union government what post their country hopes to get in the next European Commission, and the response is the same every time - something important to do with the economy.  Well, you can’t blame people for not hurrying to step into the shoes of Leonard Orban, the Romanian commissioner for multilingualism.

On the other hand, there aren’t enough top economic jobs for Commission president José Manuel Barroso to satisfy everyone.  Truth to tell, the Commission looks too big with 27 members.  But that’s the way it is, and that’s the way it will stay under the EU’s Lisbon treaty.  A guaranteed seat on the Commission seems a simple, visible way of making a country’s citizens feel connected to the EU.

The main four economic portfolios in Barroso’s outgoing Commission have been - in no particular order - competition, the internal market, trade, and economic and monetary affairs.  These have been occupied by the Netherlands, Ireland, Britain and Spain respectively.  By contrast, France has held two lesser posts (first transport, then justice, freedom and security), and Germany has dropped almost completely out of sight in the post of enterprise and industry.

As Barroso puts together his new team, France and Germany are in the hunt for really big jobs and feel no doubt that they deserve them because of their relatively diminished status in the outgoing Commission.  The French and Germans want to play a much more direct role in shaping the EU’s economic and financial policies as the EU struggles to emerge from recession, rewrites its rules on financial regulation and defends its industries in world markets.  France is said to desire the internal market job on the Commission, and Germany would like something equally prominent.

All this is causing some nervousness in Britain and a few like-minded countries that the next Commission will be less free market-oriented than its predecessor.  In response I would make two points.  First, this is the spirit of the age - you can expect nothing less after the recent near-meltdown of the western world’s financial system and the associated regulatory failures.

But secondly, it just does not follow that to give a top economic dossier to France or Germany means that the Commission will be wrenched in the direction of some manically illiberal étatisme and fiendishly pro-Volkswagen industrial policy.  To take one excellent example, Pascal Lamy, the Frenchman who served as trade commissioner from 1999 to 2004, was a robust defender of free trade and now is head of the World Trade Organisation.  The same would be true if the next French commissioner were someone like Christine Lagarde, who at present is President Nicolas Sarkozy’s finance minister (she is still a possible choice, some think, even though it looks as if Sarkozy is going for Michel Barnier).

EU commissioners, at their best, are like US Supreme Court justices.  When a president picks a judge to sit on America’s highest court, everyone’s first thought is, “Here we go, a blatant political appointment designed to push the Court in a certain ideological direction”.  Then, more often than not, the nominee causes a surprise by putting the court’s interests first and acting independently.  So it can be at the Commission, where the institutional culture of independence from political pressure is stronger than many on the outside assume.

Read today’s analysis in the FT of the consequences of Ireland’s vote on the Lisbon treaty. Follow this link:

EU embarks on voyage of discovery after Lisbon

Leave your comments below.

Now that José Manuel Barroso is safely re-installed as European Commission president for the next five years, it would be tempting to think that - from an institutional point of view, at least - all is well in Brussels.  Tempting, but wrong.

Once again, it is our old friend the Lisbon treaty that is the problem.  On October 2 Irish voters, who rejected the treaty in a referendum in June 2008, will have the chance to reverse their verdict.  Opinion polls indicate that the Yes camp will win this time.  But there is an unmistakeable air of nervousness at the European Union’s headquarters that the polls may not be a reliable guide to the eventual outcome.

The fundamental problem is Ireland’s economic collapse over the past 12 months, which has plunged the government’s popularity ratings to unprecedented depths.  The public mood is as sour as a pint of stale Guinness.  In this climate, anti-Lisbon campaigners are finding some voters receptive to the argument that, since pro-Lisbon politicians ruined the economy, why should they be trusted when they say the treaty is good for Ireland?

But the Irish referendum is not the only cloud on the EU’s horizon.  For even if Ireland votes Yes, there remain considerable doubts over when Václav Klaus, the Czech president, will append his signature to the Lisbon treaty, allowing it to take force.  Fears are growing in Brussels that Klaus intends to find an excuse to delay signing as long as possible - certainly, until some time in the first half of next year.

The EU will then face its ultimate nightmare - that the Lisbon treaty will not have been ratified by the time that the UK holds its next general election, due by June.  The rampantly anti-Lisbon Conservative party is widely expected to win the election, and Tory leaders have made clear that, if Lisbon is unratified when they take power, they will call a referendum on the treaty.  All the evidence suggests the British would vote No.

If events take this course, it will poison the atmosphere in the EU and make it even harder than it is now to defend all the good things about the 27-nation bloc, such as the single European market and the successful knitting together of western and eastern Europe.  Troubling times, indeed.

When does No mean Yes - or maybe?  I’m not venturing here into the treacherous territory of date rape law, but rather thinking of what politicians say when they’re asked if they want to be the European Union’s first permanent president.

Take Felipe González, Spain’s socialist prime minister from 1982 to 1996.  Rumours have swirled around Brussels for months that González is interested in the job and that President Nicolas Sarkozy of France would be pleased to see him get it.  González’s fellow Spaniard, Javier Solana, who is the EU’s foreign policy high representative, is on record as saying last June that he believes the ex-premier “has the energy and the capacity for the job”.

So I feel it’s my duty to report that John Thornhill, a Financial Times colleague, took González to one side at a conference in Italy last weekend and put the $64,000 question to him.  Here is what the great man replied: “Some people are talking about myself, and I have said that I will not be a candidate.  This means that I have to be extremely careful about talking about other candidates, whether it is to support them or not.  Some people could criticise me for making my views public when I’m not going to be a candidate.”

González’s reply looks superficially like a No.  In fact, to say that you’re not a candidate isn’t the same thing at all as saying that you will never accept the job under any circumstances.

As it happens, I think there is one very good reason why González would be right to think twice before taking on this particular job.  The permanent EU presidency is set to come into operation in January, if Irish voters approve the EU’s Lisbon reform treaty in a referendum next month and if Václav Klaus and Lech Kaczynski, the recalcitrant Czech and Polish presidents, can be persuaded to sign the document.

But the establishment of the permanent presidency will not mean the abolition of the existing EU system, under which every country holds the union’s rotating presidency for six months at a time.  All EU member-states love their six months in the spotlight, and many have no intention of stepping to one side in order to let the EU’s first permanent president grab all the attention.

And guess what?  The country that will hold the rotating presidency from January 1 to June 30, 2010 - just when the permanent presidency is to be launched - is none other than Spain.  The Spanish government has absolutely no intention of meekly vanishing into the shadows to let the EU’s first permanent president steal the show.

Perhaps national pride would induce a more accommodating attitude from Spain, if González were picked for the job.  But I wouldn’t bet on it - and from the sound of things, nor would Felipe.

What’s the connection between martial arts and European financial market regulation?  Answers in Bulgarian, please.  Because the most colourful member of the newly elected European Parliament’s powerful economic and monetary affairs committee is surely Slavi Binev, a Bulgarian MEP. 

Binev is a Taekwondo champion whose parliamentary website describes him, with little exaggeration, as “the most recognisable figure in the history of martial arts in Bulgaria”.  Perhaps I should add that he is also a wealthy man who belongs to Bulgaria’s ultra-nationalist Ataka party and who runs a company specialising in nightclubs, construction and finance.  He knows, shall we say, how to look after himself.

The committee on which Binev sits is extremely important.  Along with national governments and the European Commission, it will shape all the financial services legislation that the European Union intends to adopt in the wake of the global financial crisis.  People in the City of London are nervous that the EU will damage their business by clumsy or aggressive over-regulation.  But the truth is that, if they want to stop that happening, they must roll up their sleeves and get to work with Binev and his fellow committee members (who include Rachida Dati, France’s former justice minister, and Eva Joly, the Norwegian-born French anti-corruption magistrate).

A close look at the committee’s make-up reveals some interesting details.  It has 48 full members and 46 substitute members.  Among the full members, a key role will be played by MEPs from Germany, the UK, France and Spain, who account for exactly half their number (eight Germans, six Brits, six French and four Spaniards).  Sixteen other countries are represented on the committee.

But these days MEPs tend to vote more along party lines than nationality, so it is also useful to note that this committee contains 17 moderate centre-right members, 13 socialists, five centrist liberals and a sprinkling of Greens, far leftists, Eurosceptics and other oddballs - including Binev.  As in previous legislatures, the three mainstream political groups will dominate proceedings.

Crucially, the committee chairmanship will be held by Sharon Bowles, a British liberal.  It is possibly the most important committee post in the entire European Parliament.  With the right input from governments, the Commission and the financial services industry itself, her influence may go a long way to ensuring that the EU does nothing foolish, or too foolish, in the field of financial market regulation.