On a recent Friday in Brussels, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso presented his new team of Commissioners and their respective portfolios for the next five years. For the first time in recent history, that new Commission was not announced on the fringes of a meeting of EU heads of state, which may give the innocent bystander the impression that Barroso made his choice relatively independently of the member states.

Nothing is further from the truth – of course a great deal of horse-trading went on behind the scenes, it was just better concealed than usual.

The result is that France gets the internal market, a political lightweight from Spain gets competition, Germany gets energy (watch that space), and Janusz Lewandowski from Poland gets the budget.

Does that mean Poland will act as Europe’s budget guardian for the next five years? No it doesn’t.

The fact that the post is currently held by the Commissioner from Lithuania should say enough about its weight. The reality is that the member states set the true budgetary guidelines for the Union, while the Commissioner in charge has very limited influence and is mainly charged with overseeing the number crunchers.

The argument for giving Poland a second-tier portfolio yet again was the appointment, several months ago, of Jerzy Buzek as President of the European Parliament. And whether Buzek will be the influential and important Polish representative in Brussels so urgently needed remains to be seen, as it is up to the man himself – and he is the first parliament president under the newly ratified Lisbon Treaty which extended the chamber’s powers – to redefine the job.

While a lot can be said about the workings of the European Parliament and the lack of a genuine majority-versus-opposition framework which we are familiar with in our parliamentary democracies, Buzek has the key to taking the parliament’s role to the next level and changing the house into the true third EU institution with real influence.

Time will tell whether he will, and whether the reason he was picked for the job is that at the end of the day, that he won’t.

Buzek’s first real job will be the approval of the new Commission in late January, and most analysts already expect that this will happen without much resistance. The choice of Commissioners is the result of such a delicate acte de balance, and no one would really want to upset that.

And so the wheels on the Brussels machine continue to go round and round, round and round, for yet another year. From Brussels, a Merry Christmas and Happy 2010. And stay tuned, there’s more to come.