The conflict between the European Parliament and the new president of the Commission could and should have been avoided, writes Garret FitzGerald
Whatever one may think of the merits of the arguments the two sides have been propounding about Mr Buttiglione, the choices made by Mr Barroso in relation to this and several other portfolios were maladroit.
One cannot help wondering whether this whole matter might not have been better handled by a more sensitive Commission president.
The choice of Mr Barroso, the Portuguese prime minister, as president of the Commission reflects the fact that a change in the method of filling the post included in the Nice Treaty has not been implemented by the heads of state and government.
The original Rome Treaty provided that both the members of the Commission and its president be chosen by member governments "by common accord".
As far as the Commission members were concerned, this came to mean that each country nominated its own member(s) without challenge by other governments - a fact that I discovered shortly after being appointed minister for foreign affairs in March 1973.
A new commissioner was appointed to fill a vacancy without any reference to the Irish government, as I had naively assumed would be the case in accordance with that treaty provision.
I discovered that assent to Commission nominations had come to be seen as a routine matter.
By contrast, the appointment of the president of the Commission from amongst its members was made by agreement between member-states in accord with the treaty - and at that time the European Parliament had no role in the matter.
This procedure for choosing a president gave every government a veto.
And this veto was used from time to time by large states to exclude candidates whom they regarded with disfavour.
I recall that in 1984, as president of the European Council, I experienced some difficulty in persuading Margaret Thatcher not to exercise a veto on the nomination of Jacques Delors - a Frenchman - as president of the Commission.
Through a series of telephone calls I had established that he was favoured by all other governments.
When the second-last commission was being appointed, the British vetoed the Belgian prime minister, Mr Dehaene, with the result that a weaker candidate, Mr Santer of Luxembourg, was appointed. That Commission later had to resign.
In the process of negotiating the Nice Treaty, this veto issue came up for discussion, and it was agreed to change the treaty provision in relation to this matter.
The president was in future to be nominated by a qualified majority in the European Council, but would have to be approved by the European Parliament before his or her actual appointment by the European Council.
The list of other members of the Commission now has to be adopted by the European Council by qualified majority, but with a new right of veto for the incoming president, with whom on this matter the European Council is to act "by common accord".
The list then has to be approved by the European Parliament. And only when that has been done is the European Council able to appoint the president and the members of the Commission.
So, contrary to the popular view, Mr Barroso is at present only a nominee for president, and he cannot be appointed as president until after the parliament has approved the members of the Commission.
The trouble is that although the member-states have thus formally recognised the undesirability of national vetoes in relation to such appointments, and have taken the necessary legal steps to end this practice, they have failed to carry this through in practice.
For it is known that when the presidency of this new Commission was under discussion, vetoes on several strong candidates by individual states were accepted by the rest, thus de facto setting aside the new Nice Treaty qualified majority voting system.
Mr Barroso emerged only after other stronger candidates had been sidelined by several de facto vetoes.
It is at least possible that if the heads of government had stuck to the rules they themselves had laid down at Nice, using qualified majority voting to select the president of this commission, a different Commission president would have avoided the maladroit selection of several nominees for sensitive posts.
It may be asked why did other members of the European Council not ignore the attempted vetoing of several strong candidates and insist on the use of the Nice Treaty provision for qualified majority voting?
One can only speculate. But inside the EU small countries are reluctant to take on large ones on issues that do not directly affect significantly their own national interest.
The leaders of large countries do not like such challenges.
One only has to recall how violently President Chirac responded to the decision of eight new member-states in eastern Europe to announce jointly their support for the US over Iraq.
And some political leaders of large countries have long memories.
So, while theoretically the Taoiseach might have insisted on a qualified majority vote on one or more of the vetoed candidates, this would probably have served only to create an almighty row with some or all of the larger states.
We live in an imperfect world.
And the fact is that a certain amount of live-and-let-live, and some occasional "back-scratching" of the "I'll help you on this if you don't block me on that" kind has helped over the decades to keep the community running smoothly.
Nevertheless, despite these imperfections, the fact remains that the EU is exceptionally well-designed to ensure that the interests of the small are protected against exploitation by the large.
The provision under which the European Commission has the sole right of initiating legislation has been astonishingly successful in protecting the weak against the strong.
The fact that in a period of over 30 years Ireland has never been seriously disadvantaged by any EU decision, even decisions taken by qualified majority voting, provides the clearest evidence of how well the community system was designed half a century ago.
Occasionally a small price has to be paid for this such as the exercise of prudence by smaller countries in not taking on their larger neighbours on issues that are not of immediate importance to them.
I suspect that this may help to explain why the new qualified majority system for choosing the president of the commission was not pressed into service in this occasion.