Barroso hangs his portrait. Goodbye and no regrets

(BRUSSELS2) After ten years at the head of the Commission, “424 meetings” as he liked to say to the press, José-Manuel Barroso is leaving his post today. Without leaving much regret behind, to tell the truth.

No one says Stay Mr Barroso!

No one, even in his political camp, hastened to say “stay Mr Barroso! ". On the contrary. Yet the man does not lack qualities. He is lucid, intelligent, ambitious. But these qualities, the former Portuguese Prime Minister did not really put them at the service of Europe. He rather sought, each time, to find the compromise, the dodging, which would prevent him from playing the bad role. " You are the champion of absent subscribers said Green MEP Daniel Cohn Bendit of him.

Turn around at the liner "European Commission"

Apostle of deregulation, and of the minimum of initiatives possible during the first part of his mandate, champion of codes of conduct and other modes of self-regulation (which only very rarely worked), Barroso was taken reversed by the financial crisis. The European executive began by first denying any effect of the subprime crisis that started across the Atlantic, then spread to the United Kingdom. Then, like a gigantic ocean liner, it took more than a year to turn around, to change its ideology, to begin to regulate the financial markets again, under the notable impetus of the Frenchman Michel Barnier, thus redoing the opposite path that had been traveled in previous years.

Keep Greece in the euro

In Barroso's defense, member states did not make it easy for him. But this data is almost inscribed in the DNA of the European Commission. Indulge in To its credit, the Euro zone has not exploded as the Cassandras still liked to predict two or three years ago. " Many market observers, economists, academics and politicians bet on the disintegration of the euro zone and the euro. I am proud because the Commission is the only institution which has never hesitated "who has always defended the" Greece's presence in the euro zone ". " We lived through extremely serious times, it was not only Greece, Portugal or Ireland that were threatened, Spain, Italy and even France were under enormous pressure from the markets ».

Successful enlargement

And the enlargement was not the announced catastrophe. It's even " One of the great successes of the EU to have succeeded in working at 28. When I took office it was considered impossible to work at 25. The Commission worked without difficulty. " All decisions were made by consensus. There has been no distinction within us between New Member States and old Member States ". A tour de force according to him. With a reality. " It was not the new Member States that gave me the most problems” concedes the person concerned. “I had a lot more problems to deal with with other people “concedes the interested party.

self-satisfaction

In the end, Barroso awards himself a thumbs up. " Thanks to the new competences for the Commission and the European Central Bank, we now have a stronger and more capable Europe for the future. » Does he just recognize that "that our actions were not perfect". But it is immediately to explain that “This is linked to the complicated decision-making process in Europe. We couldn't move as fast as we wanted.".

All of Barroso's strategy and ambiguity are summed up there: it's never his fault and always those of others. This self-sufficiency and self-satisfecit are more than irritating. If we cannot throw the stone of rising eurosceptiscim at him, and of the negative referendum on the Constitution in 2005 in France as in the Netherlands, his behavior in the last years of crisis, the absence of a clear European project for the citizens ( apart from that of austerity), has certainly contributed not a little to widening the gap between citizens and Europe.

We understand why, in Brussels today, everyone wants to turn the “Barroso” page. Long live tomorrow. But Jean-Claude Juncker, Barroso's successor, is expected at the turn. Presenting himself as the "Last Chance Commission" (which is a bit risky in my opinion), he cannot, he must not disappoint...

(Nicolas GROS-VERHEYDE)

NB: Extended version of an article published this morning in Ouest-France

Lire:

• Ten years of Grouper (October 2014)
• Casting error at the European Commission (the first article on Barroso, published in France-Soir, in March 2005, which earned me a place in the Barroso team's pantheon of "not nice journalists", which I take for... a compliment )

Read also:

• Exit José Manuel Barroso: ten years of non-intervention and àquoibonisme (RTBF, Anne Blanpain)
• Barroso leaves Brussels through the back door (Behind the scenes of Brussels / Liberation, Jean Quatremer)