(BRUSSELS) - The surprise departure of Pater Mandelson from Brussels has accentuated the impression that the EU Commission is already winding down more than a year before its mandate ends.

The EU's executive arm on Friday confirmed news that its trade commissioner Mandelson was joining the ranks of another political institution undergoing changes, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Labour government.

Mandelson's resignation is just the latest defection from the team of EU Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso who saw his Cypriot health commissioner Markos Kyprianou return home in February to become his country's foreign minister.

Shortly after that Italian Franco Frattini abandoned his post as the European Union's justice and security commissioner to become foreign minister in the new government of Silvio Berlusconi.

Comings and goings between national governments and the European Union executive are common enough, but the sudden and unexpected departures of three such heavy hitters much less so.

"It is clear that with the end of the current commission's mandate so near (November 2009) the tendency is accelerating" to leave and secure a good post in domestic politics, one source close to the commission said.

"There a simple reason; the commissioners who have essentially completed their programme have nothing much to prove. For those who have been stymied it is too late to have another go," she added.

For her and other European diplomats, Mandelson finds himself in the latter category, having recently seen talks on his beloved Doha round of world trade liberalisation crash and burn.

A keen partisan of freeing up trade rules and easing EU dumping measures, Mandelson failed to convince his European Commission colleagues who feared industry would move out.

Therefore Mandelson -- one of the architects of "New Labour" in Britain, a sworn Blairite and a long-time adversary of Brown -- is only too happy to jump ship, despite his uneasy relationship with the British prime minister.

The EU policy commissioners -- each of the 27 member states is entitled to one -- are not the only ones leaving ahead of the big shake up of 2009.

Two high-ranking functionaries already packed their bags earlier this year.

Michel Petite, the French director general of the commission's legal service joined a legal firm while Dane Peter Carl, who was head of the commission's environment department, is now an environmental advisor for the French government.

Then just last week Benoit Le Bret, head of cabinet for European Commission Vice President Jacques Barrot, quit to join another firm of lawyers.

The wave of departures comes with the EU engaged in another prolonged bout of navel-gazing over its reforming Lisbon Treaty.

The treaty, which would shake up both the commission and the European parliament as well as make decision-making easier in the expanding bloc, was thrown off course last June when Irish voters rejected it.

The overall impression is that the European Commission is slowing down as January 1, 2009 approaches, the date the Lisbon Treaty was originally scheduled to breath fresh life into the European project.

Barroso's detractors accuse him of doing whatever possible not to rock the boat or upset member states ahead of their decision on whether to offer him a second term as commission head.

However he is also aware that a lack of action could be dangerous at a time of financial crisis which could continue throughout next year.

EU Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy, an Irishman with a very liberal reputation as far as market regulation is concerned, has so far come up with preliminary legislative proposals to ease the crisis, under pressure from the member states.

Meanwhile, the leaders of France, Germany, Britain and Italy at a meeting in Paris on Saturday vowed to protect fragile banks in their fight against the global credit crisis.

Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel insisted however states would mainly act individually to rescue failing banks, instead of creating a European-wide fund.

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