Barroso kicks off campaign

The president-designate of the European Commission began his campaign for parliamentary approval yesterday and was quick to assert his independence from the European Union leaders who nominated him.

Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso was unanimously nominated on Tuesday as successor to Romano Prodi at the head of the bloc's executive, but the European Parliament must still vote to approve him.

The vote is due on July 22, and Barroso's first engagement yesterday was to visit parliament's President Pat Cox.

Among his top priorities will be to distribute portfolios among the 25 members of the Commission, one from each member state, and Mr Barroso made clear he wanted to do so without outside pressure from big countries looking to carve up the top jobs.

"The distribution of the portfolios is the responsibility of the president of the Commission. I'm not ready to give up any of my responsibilities," he told a joint news conference with Mr Cox. "I'm ready to listen to suggestions, of course. I think it's also important to have a good cooperative relation with the heads of state," he added.

Mr Cox supported him, saying EU leaders should "back off" and let him make his own choices freely.

The comments came amid suggestions that Mr Barroso's nomination by a consensus of the 25 EU leaders had been the result of horse-trading among the big powers to secure the key Commission jobs in exchange for not blocking Mr Barroso.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesman said London was not pressuring Mr Barroso for a senior job.

"It's too early for those discussions to have taken any shape," he said. "Mr Barroso needs to get his feet under the table. The discussions will take place in the normal way. He understands our position."

But German enlargement commissioner Guenter Verheugen was quick to press his claim for the proposed new role of "super-commissioner" in charge of economic policy, saying his experience in guiding 10 new countries into the bloc when it expanded in May made up for any lack of economic background.

"I don't think there is any politician from the German opposition that took as many important decisions on economic policy in a year as I had to take every week in the past five years," he told German ARD television.

Mr Barroso was seen as a compromise candidate after Britain and Italy refused to accept the Franco-German choice of Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, and Berlin and Paris blocked EU External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten, a Briton.

Mr Cox, himself a former hopeful for the Commission presidency, strongly endorsed Mr Barroso's right to pick his own team.

"It would be helpful now if member states... would give the president-elect the dignity appropriate to that high office and the choice that he is mandated under law to make," he said.