Charlie gets some muscle in Brussels

DURING the summer, Leinster House is like the desolate Overlook Hotel, where Stanley Kubrick’s stomach-churning horror film The Shining takes place.

The tourists have long gone back to their constituencies. The long corridors are eerily deserted. The few journalists billeted on the top floor wander around like the Shelly Duvall character, their eyes popping out of their head with fear. The air is of impending doom, of something truly awful about to happen, like a breaking story.

And then when you least expect it, the hatchet smashes through the door. The indolent hacks are woken from their slumber by a blood-curdling yell: "HERE'S CHARLIE!"

And pushing The Shining metaphor to its limits, we enter the labyrinthine maze that is the EU Commission, and discover the Cassandras were wrong. McCreevy has indeed been plucked from the chorus line and given star billing. Charlie is happy. Bertie was right. To boot, he has shown all that 'nonsense and lies' peddled by the media for what it was.

And so the first plot of the summer has had its denouement. McCreevy, the reluctant hero, will after all become a Muscles in Brussels. Okay, it wasn't Competition but Internal Market and financial services is still one of top five money portfolios.

José Manuel Durão Barroso has acted early and decisively in choosing his 25-member commission. That could give a lead to the second major political plot-line during the summer doldrums. Bertie Ahern is currently writing the final chapter of this potboiler, provisionally entitled PS I Lose You, while on his holidays in Kerry. We've been promised suspense, shock and awe. Yep, they've even gone so far as to use the comfort blanket phrase of politics, radical change. Are we to expect a dramatic culling? Hmmm, we'll see.

You have to hand it to Barroso, though. Like virtually the entire British Cabinet, he was a youthful left-wing siren (Maoist in his case) who had a Damascene conversion and embraced market liberalisation. Portugal, at one time the darling of European economies, had a couple of tough years and he didn't flinch from imposing tough and deeply unpopular reforms.

Barroso showed his iron grip by making his announcement a week early and effectively telling the traditional power-blocs of the EU, the French and the Germans, that he will not be cowed by them. Gerhard Schröder spent the early summer busily floating the idea of a 'super commissioner' with over-arching responsibility for all the economic portfolios (that would go to Germany, of course). The incoming EU President sank that one without trace. As it was, Germany was still awarded the key Industry portfolio and a vice-presidency but the country's more protectionist outlook may be outflanked by the free market liberals who occupy the other economic job.

On top of that, Barroso, by awarding the mid-table Transport job to French commissioner Jacques Barrot, has been portrayed in the Paris media as delivering something of a rebuff to French President Jacques Chirac.

It seems Barroso has assembled a team of commissioners in the key positions who will not be as amenable to follow the agendas of France and Germany, for long the dominant forces within the EU. McCreevy, Competition Commissioner Nellie Kroes and Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson are all from the reformist school and will champion Barroso's aim of achieving the goals set out in the Lisbon Agenda, which aims to make Europe the world's most competitive and high-tech economy by 2010. Indeed, his outlook dovetails with that of Ireland, which made Lisbon the key theme of its presidency.

AND just to keep commissioners on their toes, Barroso signalled what might be a major reshuffle of portfolios in two years. The opportunity will come when Javier Solana becomes a full commissioner (as foreign minister) when the Constitutional Treaty is ratified, perhaps in 2006. That will mean current Spanish commissioner Joaquin Almunia will have to make way. His portfolio is Economics and Monetary Affairs, another big money job. That will allow Barroso initiate a major power-shift if required. On early form, he won't shirk from it. Come autumn, we will discover if Bertie's musical chairs will live up to the hype and deliver an equal coup de grâce,