Commentary

The nomination of Mr Romano Prodi as president-designate of the European Commission is a smart and timely move by the Berlin Summit to repair the damage caused by the recent mismanagement crisis which caused the existing Commission to resign en bloc.

Mr Prodi will have time over the next couple of months to assemble his ideas and to bargain with governments about their nominations to the next Commission. It will be important for the authority of the institution that he should maintain its autonomy as well as develop a mandate for reform in dialogue with the heads of state and government.

The Commission has an essential role to play in giving effect to the EU's policies. It has the sole power of legislative initiative. Traditionally, its role as a policy broker has been seen as a means of balancing the interests of smaller and larger member-states. Without it the EU would reflect much more the larger states which dominate the continent's politics and economics.

As the EU prepares to renegotiate representation in the institutions and re-weight votes in preparation for enlargement, the larger states still have an ambivalent attitude towards the strength and independence of the Commission. It is very much in the interests of smaller countries such as Ireland to preserve these characteristics intact.

There has been much comment on the deliberate decision of political leaders in 1994 to appoint Mr Jacques Santer as a compliant and relatively weak Commission President. On this occasion the penny has dropped that this is not necessarily in the interests even of the larger states. If Mr Santer had been a stronger figure he would have been able to insist on the management capacity and resources to do the extra work allocated to the Commission in recent years, notably in conducting enlargement negotiations and running large pre-accession aid programmes with potential future member-states.

Mr Prodi's political and administrative records show he can manage effectively and in a targeted fashion. His achievements in running the Italian industrial holding company IRI and steering Italy towards membership of the euro are clear evidence of this.

He has also been able to work with a very diverse group of political parties, straddling traditional left-right divides. His language skills and academic training in Britain and the US mean that he also straddles the divide between the continental and Anglo-Saxon worlds. His record as a reformer has endeared him to Mr Blair and Mr Clinton and he is associated with their so-called "third way" between state socialism and neo-liberalism.

Mr Prodi also straddles a north-south divide in Europe between richer and poorer states and between suggested Protestant and Catholic attitudes to public administration and accountability. As a Christian Democrat untainted by that party's association with corruption, he can appeal to both these camps.

In Italian as well as European terms he describes himself as a federalist, though with a small `f'. This was clear in a lecture he gave at the European University Institute in Fiesole on the eve of the European Council at Florence in June 1996. He was at pains to emphasise the need to protect national diversities within a common European framework.

Mr Prodi inherits a number of reform programmes and scenarios from the outgoing Commission, a point those who work for it are keen to make. They include plans to reorganise its authority structures, possibly by appointing several vice-presidents with specific responsibilities for co-ordinating and directing its work.

They might include senior commissioners with overall control of external policy, economics and - after the crisis - budget control and personnel affairs. Already there have been discussions about clustering the work of the Commission's directorates general along these lines to make it more coherent.

Mr Prodi should have time to develop such a mandate in coming days. He has the right to bargain with governments about who they will nominate as commissioners. From the Irish point of view, the likely time scale for making the appointments means the case for nominating heavyweight political figures, including possible non-coalition ones, will grow.

Intriguingly, Mr Prodi is a close friend of the former Irish commissioner, Mr Peter Sutherland. Watch this space.