PARIS -- France and Germany no longer make the law in Brussels. In spite of a long fight, they failed to get their Belgian candidate elected to head the European Commission and could only accept the appointment of Jose Durao Barroso, who, as prime minister of Portugal, backed U.S. intervention in Iraq. That's why his candidacy was supported by Britain. Officially he is a "social-democrat," but in Lisbon the word means conservative.
Barroso, who will take office Nov. 1, has promised not to be "president of the right against the left," but to act as "a bridge between older member-states and the new, the rich and the poor, the center and the periphery, the great and the small." He couldn't speak better French.
Barroso quickly turned down a proposal by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac to create a position of "super-commissar for economic matters." That was opposed by liberals, including British Labourites, who joined with rightists in voting for Barroso.