France grabs plum Brussels financial services post

(BRUSSELS) - France secured control on Friday of a prized Brussels post overseeing banks and other financial services, despite staunch British resistance to EU efforts to regulate the City of London.

Michel Barnier will take the top financial post, with an Englishman running day-to-day affairs, after French President Nicolas Sarkozy held late-night telephone talks with commission head Jose Manuel Barroso.

"The task I have handed Mr Barnier is very clear: to deepen the internal market in all its dimensions," Barroso said, unveiling his list of 26 new commissioners. "I want the internal market to truly exist. It's one of (our) major priorities."

Barnier himself vowed to act "independent of private and national interests," adding that he needed no reminding of "the importance of the financial industry to Britain."

A former commissioner for regional EU affairs, European lawmaker Barnier, 58, has still to be vetted at parliamentary hearings in the New Year and could face opposition based on British fears of a statist, intervenionist agenda.

However the choice of an English minder, Jonathan Faull, currently at justice and home affairs, seems designed to head off that threat, and in any case member states look set to limit Barnier's scope at least in the short term.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has made it a personal priority to rein in European plans to control banks, insurers and markets from Brussels, and insiders on both sides of the English channel suggest Britain will win the day.

Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a leader of the Greens in the European Parliament, also snarled that giving an Englishman administrative control was like "putting a Gazprom representative" in charge of energy policy mandarins -- a reference to the giant Russian gas company.

Nonetheless Britain's opposition conservatives, expected to seize power in next year's election, were furious that four top economic jobs all escaped London's grasp, days before the EU's reforming Lisbon Treaty enters force.

"Some of Mr Sarkozy's past comments on the single market have been of concern," said British conservative EU lawmaker Malcolm Harbour. "We will make it clear that the single market commissioner must stand up for open and free markets."

Barroso gave his "cabinet" a mandate to make the tools offered by Lisbon a reality, having already secured a second five-year term as president in September, and the other key economic jobs went to Belgium, Finland and Spain.

Joaquin Almunia was given control of competition policy, which carries vast anti-trust and cartel powers affecting businesses worldwide, with Finland's Olli Rehn taking over the Spaniard's economic and monetary affairs brief.

Meanwhile, the plum post of trade commissioner went to former Belgian foreign minister Karel de Gucht -- a second top job for the EU's host country, after Herman Van Rompuy was named full-time bloc president.

The European Commission handles the money -- a 116-billion-euro (174-billion-dollar) budget for 2008 -- for the 27-nation bloc, home to half a billion people and the world's biggest trading entity.

It proposes and enforces laws from Portugal in the west to Poland in the east, and Finland in the north to Greece and Cyprus in the south-eastern Mediterranean.

Liberal de Gucht will lead negotiations on multi-billion trade deals with India, several southeastern Asian states and Canada, replacing Britain's Catherine Ashton -- the EU's new foreign affairs supremo and Barroso's main deputy.

De Gucht also assumes responsibility for anti-dumping issues at a time when Europe has a raft of multi-million-euro complaints ongoing against China, over cheap shoes, screws and other imports.

Meanwhile, Denmark's Connie Hedegaard was appointed to the new job of climate commissioner, while energy -- critical as Europe moves towards a low carbon economy -- went to German newcomer Guenther Oettinger.

The influence of newer EU members from the former Soviet east was made plain with budget responsibilities going to Poland's Janusz Lewandowski and Romania's Dacian Ciolos winning agriculture.

The new line-up includes 13 conservatives, eight liberals and just six socialists.