Profile: The honeymoon is over for the head of the EU following the row over Italian commissioner Rocco Buttiglione, writes Denis Staunton
In an interview this month with Newsweek magazine, José Manuel Barroso recalled a hair-raising incident from his days as a Maoist student activist in Lisbon during the 1970s. António Salazar's fascist regime had been overthrown in the almost bloodless "Carnation Revolution" and Soviet-orientated communists were attempting to take control of the country.
Barroso and his Maoist comrades resisted the communists as fiercely as they had fought the fascists and one day he was arrested by a group of military policemen who bundled him into a jeep. As the vehicle started to move, Barroso suddenly leapt out.
"I don't think you have the courage to shoot a man in the back," he shouted as he ran off.
In Strasbourg last week, Barroso sought to call the bluff of a different group of prospective captors, the MEPs who threatened to vote down his entire EU Commission. Once again, he was confident that his adversaries would lack the courage to fulfil their threats.
By Tuesday night, the former Portuguese prime minister understood that he had miscalculated badly. The following morning he withdrew his Commission team from consideration by the Parliament rather than face certain defeat.
Strasbourg's "October Revolution" could mark the beginning of a new political culture in the EU but it certainly marks the end of Barroso's brief political honeymoon.
When EU leaders chose Barroso to succeed Romano Prodi as Commission President four months ago, after a bitter battle between some of Europe's biggest states, many commentators characterised him as an uncharismatic figure who represented the lowest common denominator.
When he appeared before the press immediately after his appointment, however, the 48-year-old political scientist made an excellent impression, moving easily between Portuguese, Spanish, English and French as he responded with wit and charm to every question.
Barroso also impressed MEPs at first and - with the help of gentle pressure from national governments - won the votes of many Socialists and Liberals as well as his own centre-right allies. By this week, however, Barroso was under suspicion from all sides, facing accusations of arrogance and poor political judgment.
As he sought to reconstruct his Commission following this week's debacle in Strasbourg, there were even doubts about his own survival as Commission President.
José Manuel Durao Barroso was born on March 23rd, 1956, into a middle-class Lisbon family. His first political involvement came as a law student at Lisbon University, where he became president of the Law Faculty's academic association and joined the Maoist Reorganising Movement of the Portuguese Proletariat (MRPP).
It was at the university that Barroso met Margarida Sousa Uva, his future wife, who accompanied him on a political journey that led from the far left to the leadership of Portugal's Social Democratic Party (PSD), which is - despite its name - on the centre-right.
Barroso's political conversion appears to have started in 1976, when he spent a few months in London nursing his dying father. The following year, he and Sousa Uva were studying in Geneva, but they retained an interest in Portuguese politics and joined the PSD in 1980, the year they married.
Barroso continued his academic work while pursuing his political career, writing a number of books on the Portuguese political system and lecturing at universities in Washington, Luxembourg and Florence as well as in Portugal. He became a member of parliament in 1985, becoming secretary of state for foreign affairs two years later.
His most significant achievement in this role was the 1990 Bicesse Agreement, which led to a temporary ceasefire in the Angolan civil war. Barroso also played an important role in moves towards independence for East Timor.
He became minister for foreign affairs in 1992 but went into opposition following the PSD's election defeat two years later. In 1999, after a bitter power struggle, Barroso won his party's leadership, and in 2002 he formed a coalition with the far-right Portuguese People's Party.
Barroso was an unpopular prime minister, not least because he introduced a tough austerity programme to bring Portugal's budget deficit within the EU limit of 3 per cent of GDP. His support for the US-led invasion of Iraq was also unpopular with the Portuguese public, although his support was solely political and no Portuguese soldiers have been sent to Iraq.
Barroso's party took a severe battering at this year's European elections and some Portuguese commentators believe that his move to Brussels came just in time to avert domestic political defeat.
Barroso's language skills and easy manner in public ensured that he got off to a good start in Brussels and many insiders were impressed by the speed and apparent skill with which he put together his Commission team.
Once the team was assembled, however, the muttering started about Barroso's high-handed style and his reluctance to listen to advice. He has surrounded himself with a small group of Portuguese political advisers, all but one of whom have come directly from Lisbon to Brussels.
Some of the Commission's permanent bureaucrats were subtly attempting to distance themselves from Barroso's strategy in Strasbourg this week. In fact, however, senior Commission officials were slow to recognise the seriousness of the threat facing Barroso.
Even after his disastrous meeting with the European Parliament's political leaders last Thursday, senior officials were expressing confidence that Barroso could survive without sacrificing the Italian commissioner, Rocco Buttiglione.
Barroso appeared to believe that the national governments that had persuaded their MEPs to cross party lines to support him in July would put on similar pressure in October. But pressure from the capitals, insofar as it was applied at all, proved to be ineffective.
The longer Barroso resisted MEPs' demands for a change to Buttiglione's portfolio, the greater those demands became, so that it is now almost unthinkable that Buttiglione will be in the new Commission at all.
Barroso's friends made no secret of their impatience with Buttiglione, but Barroso felt unable to sacrifice the Italian because the centre-right leader in the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Poettering, threatened to sink the Commission if he did so.
On Tuesday afternoon, as Barroso struggled to persuade Liberals and Socialists to back him, he asked one of Europe's most experienced parliamentarians for advice.
"You've got to f**k Buttiglione before he f**ks you," he was told.
"I can't," Barroso replied. "Poettering won't let me."
In fact, it is questionable whether Poettering would have carried out his threat, not least because his European People's Party was so pleased to have secured the post of Commission President for a member of their own political family.
The imbroglio leaves Barroso severely damaged as he faces up to four weeks of negotiations with EU leaders about a Commission reshuffle, followed by a fresh round of hearings for some Commissioners.
He has an opportunity to build a new relationship with MEPs and to put together a Commission team that can win broad support from left and right. In view of the stubbornness and political ineptitude he has shown in recent weeks, however, few in Brussels are betting on his success.