All EU member-states should have the right to nominate a member of the European Commission, and the Government made a mistake in giving up that right in the Nice Treaty, according to a former senior official in Brussels.
"Ministers went to Nice saying they were determined to keep the right to nominate a commissioner; they came back having given it away," said Dr John Temple Lang in a paper presented to the Irish Centre for European Law in Trinity College Dublin.
"The policy of all small states ought to be to reverse the mistake made in the Nice Treaty and to insist that the Commission should always include one nominee of each member-state."
The Convention on the Future of Europe had been compared to the Philadelphia Convention of 1786, but the latter was more successful because delegates "had no conflicting loyalties".
He added: "The French and British governments have been trying to maximise their influence."
Prof Deirdre Curtin of the University of Utrecht, Holland, said the proposal for a president of the European Council would mean a shift in the balance of power from the Commission.
"The net result may well be an EU with less clear lines of accountability and democratic control than currently exist." Increased democracy and transparency would be "sacrificed on the altar of more efficiency".
The Commission was basically supported by the small member-states and she accused the large member-states of engaging in "political opportunism" masquerading as a quest for greater efficiency in an enlarged EU.