Europe returns from the summer vacation and a busy schedule starts in Brussels. The most important issue is the election of the President of the next Commission: who will it be and how will he be appointed?

The two questions are, of course, related. For the moment only the incumbent José Manuel Barroso is an official candidate. He has received the formal endorsement by the European Council, i.e. from the Heads of State and Government. However, it is not certain that he will find the necessary support in the European Parliament.

For the last five years, Barroso has been a weak President without vision and ambition, without leadership and action. He has made little of the Commission’s right to take policy initiatives. Instead, he has maneuvered to accommodate conservative national governments, especially from large countries. If his Commission has had one impact on European policies, it was the application of a neoliberal policy agenda and the weeding out of previous social democratic projects like the Lisbon Strategy. It has not provided a resolute response to the financial and economic crisis.

The results have been disastrous. The Brussels think-tank Bruegel has just published a report authored by Andrè Sapir, who figures as a member of President Barroso’s Group of Economic Policy Analysis, which describes Europe’s state of affairs: “There is now a distinct possibility that this crisis will be remembered as the occasion when Europe irretrievably lost ground, both economically and politically. Economically, there is a risk that, by compounding lingering demographic and economic problems, the crisis will result in a spiral of near-stagnation, rising public debt and declining innovation performance. Politically, the European Union is at risk of being blamed for having fostered a liberalization agenda in the past rather than being praised for having promoted a coordinated response to the crisis when it struck.”

The elections of the European Parliament in June 2009 were an occasion for Europe’s citizens to express their views and preferences for the direction of the next five years. They were unambiguous: parties with a clear pro-European agenda like the Greens, or those with Eurosceptic attitudes progressed. Conservatives stagnated. Social democrats, who tried to be simultaneously pro-European and nationalist or even Eurosceptic, lost.

The PES presented itself in a particularly sad condition: it could not agree on its own candidate for the presidency of the Commission and declared before the election that it would support the neoliberal Barroso for another term. After having lost 8 percent of its MEP, it then quickly turned around after the elections and opposed the re-appointment of the conservative President. It will be interesting to see if it keeps its word now.

Is there still a chance to prevent five more years of Barroso? The answer depends partly on the modalities of electing him. Under the Nice Treaty, the president of the Commission is elected by simple majority, while an absolute majority would be needed under the Lisbon Treaty. However, the Lisbon Treaty has not been ratified yet. A new referendum needs to take place in Ireland, the Presidents of Poland and the Czech Republic still need to sign the Treaty.

There are good reasons to wait for the Lisbon Treaty, as it will bring other institutional changes, notably the creation of a permanent President of the European Council, of the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and the number of national commissioners. Given that the powers of the EP are also increased, it would be logical to let Parliament choose the Commission and the Council deal with its own affairs.

If the next Commission President were chosen under the rules of the Lisbon Treaty, the chances of a ‘no’ vote for Barroso would increase. Theoretically, he could count on 268 votes from the EPP and 54 from the Conservatives, but he would still be 44 votes short of the required absolute majority. Barroso would therefore need the support of Anti-European MEPS. Not a palatable option.

By contrast an alliance of Socialist, Liberals, Greens and the United Left would only be short of 8 votes from the required 366. It might even find some MEPs from the EPP to vote against Barroso. Looking at their respective party programs, an agreement between Socialists, Liberals and Greens should not be too difficult. And given that the Socialists were unable to find their own candidate in the past, they should rally behind the former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt. He has already proven that he can successfully direct a violet coalition of liberals and socialists. He did it in Belgium for 10 years.

This column was also translated and published in German by DIE ZEIT.