New EU Commission set to be approved today

All eyes will be on Strasbourg today when the new European Commission headed by President-designate José Manuel Durao Barroso faces the final judgement of MEPs following a month of diplomatic efforts to overcome an impasse over the new line-up.

Sources in the European Parliament told The Times "there will be no surprises and the Barroso Commission will get a vote of approval and can start working".

The standoff between Mr Barroso and the Parliament was triggered by former Italian commissioner-designate Rocco Buttiglione, who outraged many MEPs because of his conservative views on homosexuality and women. He has now been replaced by Franco Frattini, the Italian Foreign Minister, who on Tuesday smoothly completed a second day of hearings for the job of justice and security commissioner.

Letters sent to the president of the European Parliament, Josep Borrell, by the chairmen of the parliamentary committees responsible for the three different hearings of commissioner-designates did not contain any negative opinions. This guarantees that today's vote will be strongly in favour of the new Commission.

During a presentation yesterday in Parliament on the priorities the new Commission will be working on in the next five-year term, Mr Barroso said that "it is now urgent that we get back to work in order to build a partnership for Europe".

Mr Barroso said his intention is to implement a positive agenda for change. He said the new Commission will work to create the conditions for growth and jobs, sharing prosperity and opportunity across the whole of the Union. He said that in order to do this, Europe must put a premium on innovation, education and research.

Mr Barroso said that on top of his agenda will be the reinforcement of European democracy and reconnecting the Union with its people. The Commission will work hard towards the ratification of the new constitution. The new Commission will also strive to improve the quality of life of all its citizens and to make a success out of the recent enlargement.

Referring to what he termed as the "misunderstanding" between the new Commission and Parliament, Mr Barroso said he believes "the European Commission and the Parliament are emerging stronger from this process of approval".

In an intervention during the debate that followed Mr Barroso's presentation, Maltese MEP Simon Busuttil said that although he was one of those who would have preferred the Commission to have been approved three weeks ago, he still thinks there are emerging lessons from what happened.

One such lesson is that the EU should not go into matters which are "morality sensitive" like abortion, euthanasia, cloning and marital relations. He said the EU has no jurisdiction over such issues and on which member states have different and conflicting positions.

Dr Busuttil said that the second lesson was that the European Parliament is becoming stronger and so the new Commission is obliged to give more weight to the views of MEPs.

The approval of the new European Commission today will have to be endorsed by the EU Council in order to become effective. This is set to be done on Friday as part of the business of the Justice and Home Affairs Council. The new commissioners will start their work officially on Monday.

The Maltese Commissioner-designate for Fisheries and Maritime Affairs, Joe Borg, told The Times he was very satisfied that finally the Commission and Parliament had found a good compromise. He said that personally he was counting the days to starting work on his "very challenging portfolio".