At the recent symposium held in Athens on May 13 on the future of Socialism in Europe many a harsh word was spoken on what the downfall of the Jose Manuel Barroso European Commission Presidency has been.

The opening speaker, George Papandreou President of the Pan Hellenic Socialist Movement and Socialist International, has left ringing words in the ears of the participants when he forcefully stated that “anyone but Barroso” would be doing a better job of leading the European Commission. He also mentioned his party’s proposition on how they believed the European Commission Presidents should be chosen (by voting a party preference from each country and then letting the countries decide).

At the same conference after also criticising the Presidency in her speech Segolene Royal a prominent member of the French Socialist Party, candidate for the 2012 Presidency and President of the Poitou- Charente region spoke exclusively to New Europe on her departure from the Conference hall telling Alia Papageorgiou that Barroso’s Commission was a presidency of lost time but that the next Commission had to take up the reins forcefully.

“I think that it will only be apt to begin driving Europe again, because today Europe has not done what it could have done and in my opinion was not glorious. I think that the Bush period was a great wide sweeping road of an opportunity for Europe to put its sustainable development politics in place, and to launch environmental policies, and this work just wasn’t done. And it is also lacking in the re-stabilisation of the Euro. Policies surrounding the stimuli were not well organised, the fines against bankers were also not sufficiently organised,” Royal said.

Looking to the European elections she seemed optimistic to the extent that this was perhaps Europe’s only hope to bring back real stabilization, in means agreeable to all, and she said that, “I think that now we really have to change hands and find someone else,” in reference to Barroso’s re-election, or not as the case may be.