The European Commission President-designate, Mr Romano Prodi, yesterday set down a clear line in the sand between the new Commission and MEPs that will be widely welcomed by EU governments, where the Parliament's new robustness has caused serious misgivings.
Mr Prodi also outlined to EU leaders at their summit a programme of radical changes aimed at transforming the institutional culture of the Commission. He spoke of reorganising portfolios but would not be drawn on individual names.
But in a move that will ensure that MEPs cannot pick off commissioners one by one or hold the Commission hostage to their policies, he told them that he would not automatically fire commissioners censured by Parliament.
Instead, he would expect individuals appointed by him to accept that they would resign should he feel obliged to ask them to do so - in effect, stretching his new treaty powers to reallocate portfolios.
In doing so, although he promised to take views of MEPs into account, he will certainly anger many who saw an opportunity at the hearings in September to seek guarantees from individual nominees of their willingness to go if asked by Parliament.
Mr Prodi said that although commissioners must be made more accountable, such requests would strike at the collegiality of the Commission. Many member-states, Ireland included, will welcome his move to preserve the delicate institutional balance that many see as key to the EU's stability.
But the main thrust of his speech to leaders concentrated on internal reforms aimed at breaking the rigidities and national coteries that have developed in the Commission and clearly setting out lines of demarcation between the political cabinet and the administration:
Greater mobility of senior officials and the rotation of directors general, breaking national strangleholds on particular directorates;
A requirement that commissioners' cabinets be made up of at least three nationalities;
A reorganisation of the spokesman service under the president to end the practice of commissioners briefing against each other;
The subordination of cabinets to the work of directorates and the location of commissioners' offices within their directorates rather than centrally at the Commission HQ;
The allocation of the responsibility for relations with the Parliament to a vice-president, possibly also charged with a new Citizens Europe service and education, youth, and culture.
Mr Prodi admitted that his thinking on the range of portfolios is not yet complete but the general thrust is to ensure greater coherence of policy through consolidation of directorates and synergy between related areas of policy - in external relations, for example, finding a means to bring together policy-making in broad areas such as foreign, development, trade and enlargement. The same will go for economic, competition and single market policy, and likewise for such areas as reform, personnel and the budget.
Health and consumer protection will be consolidated, while agriculture, fisheries, the environment, transport, energy, and nuclear safety are likely to see closer dialogue.
He insisted that there were plenty of substantial jobs to go around the 19 other commissioners.
Mr Prodi said he hoped to use his new powers to agree nominees with heads of government to ensure a well-balanced team. And he said he was "extremely concerned" to ensure the nomination of at least five women to the Commission.
He warned leaders that he will have to be able to stand over the calibre of their nominees before Parliament, a clear hint that he is prepared to use his new veto if he deems them unsuitable. A new broom is sweeping the corridors of Brussels.