It’s less than a week since General Motors agreed to sell Opel, its European arm, to a group led by Magna International of Canada, but already a wave of anger at the implications of the deal is building up.  Nowhere is this more true than in Belgium and the UK, where workers at GM plants seem far more at risk than their colleagues in Germany of losing their jobs.

This episode is, however, about much more than potential job losses.  It’s about Europe’s reluctance to come to terms with huge overcapacity in its car industry.  It’s about how best to preserve a broad manufacturing base in an era when the other main recent driver of European economic growth - lightly regulated financial capitalism - is discredited.  Finally, it is a test of the European Commission’s ability to uphold its strict rules on competition and state aid during the worst recession in the European Union’s history.

Lord Mandelson, the British government minister responsible for business and innovation, told the BBC this morning that he hoped the Commission (of which he was a member until last year) “should not accept anything that looks like a political fix” in the Opel deal.  This remark came very close to accusing the German government of offering shedloads of financial aid to Opel - €4.5bn, to be precise - in return for a promise not to sack carworkers in Germany as the nation heads towards a general election on September 27.

This is, of course, exactly how matters are viewed in Belgium, where politicians fear that Opel’s plant in Antwerp has been earmarked for closure.  As Kris Peeters, who heads the government of the Flanders region, bluntly put it in July: “Those who put more money on the table win.”  The Flanders government had tried its best, offering up to €500m to Opel, but the Germans crushed them with a sum nine times bigger.

The Commission made clear last Friday that it intended to study very closely the terms of the Opel sale.  According to Der Spiegel, the German news magazine, some Commission experts think the Antwerp plant may be more efficient than the Opel factory in Bochum, one of four company plants in Germany.  But don’t hold your breath on this one.  In EU institutions as much as in German politics, the power of the German car industry lobby is something to behold.

The truth of the matter is that almost no one in the EU, whether in government or in the car industry, wants to face up to the chronic problem of overcapacity.  Fiat’s Sergio Marchionne is an honourable exception, but he lost out early in the scramble for GM’s European assets.

As surely as night follows day, there will be a loser in all this.  And at the moment, it looks like being the German taxpayer.

Like much public life in the European Union, José Manuel Barroso’s battle to win reappointment as European Commission president is a battle of low politics dressed up in high ideals.  Barroso will be denied a second five-year term unless he secures the approval of the European Parliament, where a vote on his future should have taken place in July but was postponed until mid-September.  Now the moment of truth is close.  What can Barroso say and do to win over his socialist, Green and liberal critics?

One clue came in a speech, almost entirely ignored by the media, that Barroso delivered last week at a Barcelona business school.  Here he all but set out his policy programme for the next five years.  The speech’s most important passage read as follows: “The recent recovery spots are fragile and do not allow for any complacency.  In any case, it is clear that global growth will not return to pre-crisis levels for some time - if at all.  Those growth rates - and the economic model behind them - were simply not sustainable.”

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.  Barroso’s opponents will not be alone in asking whether the Commission president did not in fact spend much of his first term promoting the very same growth model, based on financial market innovation, deregulation and cheap capital, that he now says was unsustainable.  Still, as he points out, “the failure to predict and head off the crisis was a collective failure”, with economists, bankers, regulators, supervisors and politicians all sharing responsibility.

What model should the EU embrace in the future?  Barroso lists seven “new sources of growth”: a) open global markets and investment regimes; b) maximising the potential of the EU’s single market; c) building networks such as high-speed broadband and energy interconnections; d) innovation policies, including a new emphasis on government procurement and intellectual property strategy; e) improving employees’ skills so that they can switch from declining industries to new sectors; f) developing a low-carbon economy; and g) improving the quality of public expenditure.

It all sounds sensible enough.  A Commission president is not an economic policy tsar for Europe.  But he or she can offer a vision, speaking up for the EU’s collective interest when national leaders find it inconvenient to do so.  Barroso, in his speech, was consciously selecting policy areas where he knows he could make a difference by stating the case for common European action.

Whether it will be enough to appease his parliamentary critics is another matter.

Is the “Stop Barroso” campaign finally running out of steam?  Leaders of the main political groups in the European Parliament have pencilled in September 16 as the day when they will hold a vote on whether to confirm José Manuel Barroso for a second five-year term as European Commission president.

If this arrangement holds, then it will mark a defeat for the anti-Barroso forces who wanted to delay the vote until after Ireland held its October 2 referendum on the European Union’s Lisbon treaty.  They were striving to create a situation in which (assuming the Irish voted Yes) the EU would simultaneously choose its first full-time president, the bloc’s new foreign policy high representative and the Commission president.  In such circumstances, they hoped, Barroso would no longer be a shoo-in to run the Commission.  Other candidates would emerge.  Haggling would ensue.  It would (they dreamed) be adeus, José Manuel.

This scenario now looks rather less likely.  It reflects two factors.  First, all 27 EU governments support Barroso.  There neither is nor has been any other publicly named candidate for the Commission presidency.  Secondly, it has been crystal-clear throughout this unedifying saga that certain MEPs have been undermining Barroso purely for the purpose of securing influence over his future Commission and its policies as well as jobs and political power for themselves.

It is, of course, a fundamental human right of every MEP to make himself or herself look foolish in the public eye.  But perhaps it’s time now to get back to the real business of stabilising Europe’s financial sector and hauling the economy out of recession?

What should be the top five priorities of the next European Commission?

1) Top of my list is the defence, and if possible the strengthening, of the single European market.  This is the European Union’s bedrock achievement.  It secures prosperity for its citizens, and it underpins the EU’s collective weight in the world.  Without the single market, the EU would lose not merely its cohesion but its very reason for existence.  The single market is under strain at present because of the emergency measures taken over the past year to prop up Europe’s banking system.  These have, in effect, suspended the EU’s state aid rules in this sector.  The Commission will need to be tough in making sure that EU governments do not manipulate the rules as the emergency measures are gradually withdrawn.  Meanwhile, it should continue to press the case for integrating and liberalising the EU’s service sector, which accounts for two-thirds of all EU economic activity.

2) In second place is the need to propose useful reforms to the EU’s system of financial market regulation.  I stress “useful”, because the legislative initiatives put forward so far range from very good to mediocre.  The first category includes the creation of a EU-wide systemic risk-monitoring agency and new EU supervisory authorities.  The second category includes the proposals for clamping down on hedge funds and private equity.  These had little or nothing to do with the causes of the financial crisis.  The Commission is understandably under populist political pressures to take aim at easy targets, but it needs to be more courageous and redraft its proposals.

3) Third is a sharper definition of the Commission’s climate change and energy security policies.  Under José Manuel Barroso’s leadership, the Commission has done a good job of raising the profile of these areas.  But in my view its effectiveness has been diminished by having three separate commissioners for energy, the environment and transport.  Transport policy, in particular, is considerably less “green” and less ambitious than the EU’s rhetoric implies.  The idea of appointing a “super-commissioner” for energy and climate change has been around for quite a while in Brussels.  Now is the time to put it into practice.

4) Fourth is the task of ensuring that the Commission president and the EU’s foreign policy high representative - not to mention the EU’s first full-time president - do not tread on each other’s toes and make a mess of the EU’s relations with the outside world.  I am assuming here that the Lisbon treaty will come into effect next year.  Under the treaty’s terms, the next foreign policy chief, replacing Javier Solana of Spain, will double up as Commission vice-president.  The scope for collisions with the Commission president is obvious.  Another thing that needs sorting out is whether the foreign policy job will be purely diplomatic and political in nature, or whether it will have influence over areas such as humanitarian aid, enlargement and trade.  Up to now, these have been the preserve of different commissioners, but they are clearly intimately linked with the conduct of EU foreign policy.

5) Fifth and finally - but this is just a baffled observer’s thought - it might be a good idea for the Commission to get itself a president for the next five years.  Is anyone in the European Parliament listening?

There are two ways of looking at the imminent appointment of Jerzy Buzek, a former Polish prime minister, as the next president of the European Parliament.  The first way is to applaud Europe’s politicians for doing the right thing and giving one of the European Union’s top jobs to a man from one of the 10 former communist countries in central and eastern Europe that joined the EU in 2004-2007.  This is the highest honour yet accorded to a public figure from one of the EU’s new member-states.  Poles are justifiably proud.

The second way, however, is to be honest and recognise that the job of parliament president is about the lowest-ranking position someone could be given without its looking like an insult.  Buzek, who belongs to the legislature’s main centre-right group, won’t even hold the job for the assembly’s full five-year term: under a deal with the socialists, he will step down after two and a half years and hand over the reins to a socialist.  The fact is that, by giving this post to Buzek, older and bigger member-states in western Europe are making sure that they will get all the really big jobs when they come up for grabs later this year.

These are the European Commission presidency (already earmarked for Portugal’s José Manuel Barroso, though his reappointment to a second term is running into a few embarrassing difficulties); other top Commission portfolios, such as those covering competition, the internal market and trade; the job of EU foreign policy high representative (shortly to be vacated by Spain’s Javier Solana); and the full-time presidency of the European Council, which represents national governments.  The latter job will be created only if the EU’s Lisbon treaty is ratified by all member-states.  But assuming that it comes into existence, I will eat mon chapeau if it doesn’t go to a western European.

There is an interesting side story to all this.  Buzek’s appointment became a certainty after Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s prime minister, withdrew his candidate, Mario Mauro.  Naturally, Italy wants compensation.  Berlusconi would probably be interested in one of the big Commission jobs for Italy, but Franco Frattini, his foreign minister, has other ideas.  He would like to replace Solana as EU foreign policy chief.

The reaction in certain other EU member-states to Frattini’s ambitions is, to put it mildly, one of incredulity.  No one has forgotten Frattini’s most recent diplomatic coup - a planned visit to Iran in May that went spectacularly wrong.  Frattini had to cancel his trip at the last minute when President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad insisted on meeting him in a city where the Iranians had just announced the successful launch of a medium-range missile capable of hitting Israel.  The visit would in any case have broken the EU’s policy of avoiding high-level contacts with Iran because of its nuclear programme.

So, it’s yes to Buzek - but no, grazie to Frattini.

Say what you like about Nicolas Sarkozy, he certainly knows how to capture your attention.  At a meeting in the Elysée Palace last week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it appears that the French president recommended in no uncertain terms that Avigdor Lieberman, the hardline foreign minister, should be dropped from the Israeli cabinet and replaced with Tzipi Livni, the less abrasive opposition leader.

“Grave and unacceptable!” fumed Lieberman’s spokesman - how dare the leader of one democracy interfere in the internal affairs of another?

Here in Stockholm, where Sweden has just started its six-month European Union presidency, there are mixed views on Sarkozy.  On the one hand, Swedish government ministers are the first to recognise that, when France held the EU presidency at a critical moment in world affairs in the second half of 2008, Sarkozy - within the limits of the EU’s possibilities - provided vigorous and effective leadership.

On the other hand, the Swedes are more than a little suspicious that Sarkozy may be trying to delay José Manuel Barroso’s reappointment as European Commission president, in order to put pressure on him to appoint a French politician to a top portfolio in the next Commission, due to be picked in a few months’ time.  Whatever portfolio the French are after, goes the thinking, it is unlikely to be good news for Europe’s commitment to competition and free trade.

Well, the French aren’t the only ones playing this game.  I have spoken over recent weeks with representatives from most of the 27 EU countries, and I have yet to hear anyone say the job their country wants is that of commissioner for multilingualism (held at present by, er, Romania’s Leonard Orban).

Surely the truth is that what Sarkozy said to Netanyahu about Lieberman is what most EU leaders think - but don’t have the guts to say even privately to their Israeli counterparts.  Der Spiegel, the German magazine, calls Lieberman a “pragmatic thug” - and that is one of the kinder descriptions one comes across in Europe.

It strikes me as infantile to complain that Sarkozy is “interfering” in the internal affairs of another country, when every public posture the EU has struck since Lieberman’s appointment as foreign minister makes it perfectly plain that the EU thinks Livni would be infinitely preferable to Lieberman.  The EU may be right or may be wrong about that - but at least with Sarkozy you know where you are.

I was in Stockholm this morning when the happy news arrived that Germany’s constitutional court had given the green light in principle to the European Union’s Lisbon treaty.  I call the news “happy” not because I am biased in favour of Lisbon, but because it meant that for once the task of writing about the treaty fell to someone else at the Financial Times (on this occasion, my Berlin-based colleague Bertrand Benoit).

The EU’s masochistic efforts at institutional reform, encapsulated in the Lisbon treaty, were one of the first things I wrote about when I arrived in Brussels in 2007.  Two years later, I find that the subject refuses to go away, seeping into my daily work like a sewage leak in a cellar (a domestic problem familiar to house-dwellers in low-lying Brussels).  All the more maddening is the knowledge that almost no one in the outside world cares one stale fig about the treaty.

Still, like a junkie, I sometimes find the temptation to take one more sniff of the Lisbon glue irresistible.  Today is one of those days, and I blame Charlie McCreevy, Ireland’s EU commissioner.  After an EU summit on June 18-19, the Irish government announced that it would go ahead with a second referendum on the Lisbon treaty (Irish voters rejected it in a referendum in June 2008).  With impeccable timing, McCreevy proceeded to offer his opinion that “95 per cent” of the EU’s member-states would have voted No if they’d been given the chance in referendums of their own.

McCreevy was, of course, the hero who boldly stated before Ireland’s first referendum that he hadn’t read the Lisbon treaty and, what’s more, he doubted that any sane person would do so.  Anti-Lisbon campaigners exploited his remarks to the full.  Now McCreevy seems to be saying that EU leaders are forcing the Lisbon treaty into law against the will of the overwhelming majority of the EU’s 27 countries.

On the face of it, this is a pretty astonishing statement.  But will it make the slightest difference to the outcome of the second Irish referendum?  I haven’t yet tested the views of my fellow-sufferers in the Lisbon junkie network, but if I did, I reckon 95 per cent would say it won’t.

Back in 1970 or so, there was a children’s Saturday morning TV show called “The Banana Splits”, in which some ludicrous character or other would frantically splutter “Hold the bus!” - always too late, for the bus would proceed on its way regardless.  It is an irresistible temptation to compare the four Banana Splits of 40 years ago - Bingo, Fleegle, Drooper and Snorky - with certain members of today’s European Parliament.

For while the legislators are busy spluttering “Stop Barroso!”, they are saying it much too late.  José Manuel Barroso is proceeding on his way to reappointment as European Commission president.  In fact, the entire episode threatens to show the European Union in the worst possible light, after EU-wide elections to the European Parliament that, with their record low turnout, were themselves not exactly a ringing endorsement of the way the EU conducts its business.

Barroso is the only declared candidate for the Commission presidency, and he has the support of national political leaders across the political spectrum - centre-right, centre and centre-left.  True, he is not seen as the most inspiring or visionary of Commission presidents.  But that is, in a sense, exactly the quality that many national leaders are looking for - and the job is in their gift, subject to the parliament’s approval.

If socialist, liberal or Green politicians in the European Parliament wanted to prevent Barroso from getting a second term, they should have fought this battle before the elections to the assembly.  Each should have rallied behind a candidate of their choice.  But they did not.  The socialists were too divided even to come up with a candidate of their own.  The opportunity was lost.  It was their own fault.

Now the socialists and Greens have the nerve to suggest that the EU’s national leaders would in some way be guilty of treating the parliament with disdain, if they were to nominate Barroso at the EU summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday and then pass on his name to the parliament for approval.  But in truth, this is precisely the procedure set out under EU rules.

All that the average European citizen cares about is having a Commission president in office who gets on with his job.  Squabbling and muscle-flexing among European Parliament politicians who, like the Banana Splits, have missed the bus is not of the slightest interest to anyone - except perhaps the EU’s critics, who will gleefully point out that the newly elected legislators appear to have learnt no lessons whatsoever from the recent election campaign.