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.

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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Like many children of the 1960s, Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, the European Commission president, was a youthful communist. Now firmly on the centre-right, he explains his Maoism as a natural reaction to the autocratic regime running Portugal at the time. The young Barroso was a radical student leader during the Carnation Revolution of 1975 and some footage of those turbulent times has surfaced on YouTube recapturing those heady days. It’s certainly a far cry from pushing paper at the Berlaymont and may not be a time Barroso wants to remember. However, though the clip has disappeared from YouTube, he won’t be able to forget it. A Portuguese MEP has emailed it to the entire staff of the European parliament.

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Spare a thought for poor Guenter Verheugen. The European Union’s industry commissioner has been out of the spotlight for months now, giving few press conferences and generally doing very little to create headlines, applause or criticism. Even his favourite policy issue - the unglamourous better regulation agenda - has been kept at a mercifully low profile recently.

The next thing you know, he’s being compared to Paul Wolfowitz.

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It is amazing what a little light can do. Two lists of advisers were published by the European Commission this week. One was trotted out very happily by Jose Manuel Barroso, the president, the names of a new advisory group on energy and climate change. The other was quietly slipped out after months of pressure. It is that of the 53 special advisers to the 27 commissioners.

There are some interesting names on both. Barroso’s top team includes Peter Sutherland, ex-commissioner and chairman of BP, the energy company, and the ubiquitous Sir Nicholas Stern, whose report on the economics of climate change convinced many political skeptics.

It also boasts Nicolas Hulot, the TV presenter-turned-green-activist who has been courted by the two French presidential frontrunners, and other worthies.The two most colourful figures on the special adviser list , Rolf Linkohr and Dina Akkelidou, have already been asked to leave.

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For a Brussels reporter chasing controversy and rough and ready action, a few hurdles stand in the way.
These include arcane policy discussions that mean little outside the Brussels bubble and endless talk of the need for EU-wide co-operation to avoid dispute - hardly zippy material for stories.
But then there is Viviane Reding, telecoms commissioner and a former journalist.
Along with Neelie Kroes, competition commissioner, and Charlie McCreevy, internal market policeman, Ms Reding is one of the few card-carrying members of Brussels’ "bombshell politics" club.

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Peter Mandelson, the European trade commissioner, prides himself on his presentational skills. And that’s not just the well-cut suits. The man who helped turn Labour into New Labour and get the leftwing party back into power in Britain after 18 years in the wilderness remains proud of his achievement.
When he arrived in Brussels in 2004 he promised a similar transformation. He would put trade at the service of development, he said, as he brandished a fair trade chocolate bar and talked of his year in Africa as a volunteer aid worker.
A year later he was chewing the fat with Bono of U2 in Brussels ahead of the Live 8 concert. In Hong Kong, as the Doha development trade talks began to come off the rails, he was sporting a white Make Poverty History wristband.

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