"Merit must come first and we can only envy Ireland," said José Manuel Barroso, European Commission president, last week. He was speaking after an Irish official, Catherine Day, had replaced David O'Sullivan as secretary-general of the commission
It is indeed a tribute to their respective talents that such a comment should have been made. Both officials are in accord with Mr Barroso's thinking about the commission's proper role. But Ms Day would not have been appointed were it not for recruitment reforms put in place after the Santer commission's crisis in 1999. As a result, top commission officials change jobs after a set time and are replaced according to merit rather than in any implicit system of national balancing which is anyway contrary to commission norms.
In defending this choice, Mr Barroso emphasised the value associated with such competition as well as echoing the wider values he wants to see embedded in the EU's economic policy. Both Ms Day and Mr O'Sullivan have championed these as commission officials. Their advocacy of more open markets and extended competition puts them on the "Anglo-Nordic" side of the debate on EU economic policy, as distinct from the "continental-Mediterranean" model of capitalism identified in policy typologies.
Mr Barroso wants to see progress towards Anglo-Nordic objectives and to put the commission in the vanguard of this change. Less regulation, more efficient legislation and freer world markets are hallmarks of this approach. Ms Day as commission secretary-general and Mr O'Sullivan as official in charge of its trade directorate, will be expected to apply these policies internally - and externally - in current World Trade Organisation negotiations.
Their appointments echo Ireland's stance on these issues. Mr Barroso argued that globalisation must be harnessed, not resisted, if European values of social solidarity and equality are to be defended. He knows this can be done only in co-operation with member-states, which retain fundamental responsibility for economic policy and the levers of power to change it. But it is too early to say whether Mr Barroso can shift EU policy sufficiently in his remaining four years to make a real difference. Much depends on what policy the new German coalition government takes on. French policy will be equally important but is more uncertain following convulsion in suburbs populated by immigrants. This will not be resolved until presidential and national elections in 2007. The success of Mr Barroso's commission and of its leading officials will be judged in the following two years.