The ignominious resignation of the last Commission in the wake of a report which said it was "impossible to find anyone to take responsibility" still hangs over its successor. With the zeal of the convert, Mr Neil Kinnock, a member of the old Commission, has plunged into the project of wholesale reform and refocusing the demoralised organisation.
Management is being taught to manage. Activity-based management is the buzz-phrase, developing the ability to match resources to political priorities instead of simply taking on, willy-nilly, every new task imposed on it. New financial procedures are being brought in to every directorate to speed up programme delivery and reduce the room for fraud.
The practice of reserving jobs for particular nationalities is being ended - meritocracy is the order of the day. The wholesale redeployment of staff resources to new priorities is being enabled for the first time. Rigid and elaborate staff consultation procedures are being reshaped to diminish the influence of dinosaur unions.
Just as important, Mr Romano Prodi has launched a debate about the fundamental role of the Commission. Should a body established essentially to initiate policy be so involved in the administration of programmes? Is it possible, in the face of acute staff pressure in Brussels, to devolve more of the administration to member-states while setting a framework in Brussels to ensure consistency?
That is already happening in the reform of the management of the Union's competition supervision and in the shape of the new food safety structures being elaborated by Mr David Byrne.
The linked idea of setting out, unambiguously, EU, national and regional competences and duties, a project which the German Lander (states) are particularly keen on, also has an important political advantage. While largely unthreatening to those who favour integration, it can be portrayed for Euro-sceptical audiences in Britain and elsewhere as setting a limit to, indeed even rolling back, the onward march of Brussels.
To that end, Mr Prodi has commissioned for next spring's post-Inter-Governmental Conference a major report on the governance of the Union. Just in time to set the whole ball rolling again.