New EU Commission gets green light

STRASBOURG, France, Feb. 9 (UPI) -- EU lawmakers Tuesday approved the body's new Commission after a five-month delay.

MEPs voted overwhelmingly in favor of a European Commission led by President Jose Manual Barroso.

Barroso said Tuesday in Strasbourg his commission's priorities are "making a successful exit from the crisis; leading on climate action and energy efficiency; boosting new sources of growth and social cohesion to renew our social market economy."

Barroso managed to win approval for his team only after Bulgaria nominated a new candidate for the humanitarian aid brief. In October corruption allegations forced the resignation of the original nominee, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Rumiana Jeleva, and delayed the new team's formation.

Yet apart from the green light for the commission, a powerful EU body that proposes policies and enacts them, the 27-member body has not heard much good news recently.

The EU's economy has still not fully recovered from the economic meltdown. A budget and debt crunch in member state Greece is putting significant pressure on the 11-member eurozone, with experts calling for EU aid money to save the economy of the Mediterranean country.

"We must recognize that the interdependence of our economies requires better and more coordination," Barroso said. "If we want to overcome the crisis, reinforce the social dimension and establish a good basis for a strong economic future for Europe in the globalised world; if we want to reinforce our industrial base and launch new common European projects; then stronger economic coordination is the only way forward."

The EU aims to become a global superpower, a label it won't achieve anytime soon, observers say.

The Lisbon Treaty, a structural reform that aims to make the EU more efficient, was implemented only after years of delay; the two politicians it chose as its first two full-time leaders -- President Herman Van Rompuy and Foreign Minister Chatherine Ashton -- are low-profile figures.

U.S. President Barack Obama embarrassed Brussels further when he decided not to attend an EU-U.S. summit in Madrid in May.

French MEP Joseph Daul, leader of the center-right European People's Party, said the EU soon needed to project what it really is -- "a leader on the measures of GDP, market size and contributions to international aid."

On other aspects, such as international conflicts including Iran and Afghanistan, the EU did not deliver what it aspired to, he added, according to European news Web site Euractiv.com.