EU commissioners risk going into orbit

THE concept of ‘one for everyone in the audience’ regarding the number of EU commissioners should be abandoned.

The EU has a potential of 42 or 43 member states (from Iceland to Turkey, in the Balkans and Caucuses). Group dynamics would ensure that in order to avoid paralysis in decision-making, an inner core of 15 to 20 (of the 40+) commissioners with meaningful portfolios would form naturally. The seven countries with more than 40 million populations would dominate. The other commissioners would be in an outer orbit, like ministers of state here at home.

I believe they would be ineffectual supernumeraries. The Government showed its attitude to the commission when it failed to nominate two outstanding Irish Europeans, Peter Sutherland and Pat Cox, to it.