`We need a revolution in the way the Commission operates," the Commission President-designate, Mr Romano Prodi, told journalists yesterday as he presented his almost-new team and their portfolios. "That is what our citizens expect of us and what I intend to achieve, starting today."
Bold words indeed, and quite a challenge for this very mixed bunch of improbable revolutionaries.
Yet while Mr Prodi's claim to have achieved gender balance with a Commission having only five women was met with considerable scepticism, his case that he had established a political balance with eight centre-right members is certainly more credible, no mean achievement from a bunch of member-states dominated by socialists.
Mr Prodi said he "could not conceive of working without the support of the two main groups in the Parliament" but reiterated clearly his warning that he, not they, would be responsible for any sackings.
He insisted his dealings with the member-states had all been most amicable and that "I didn't ask individual countries to give me commissioners with a particular political background. I assessed them and was responsible for the overall political balance."
The new system of appointing the Commission in which the President has an equal say did work, he said, insisting that "Amsterdam was not introduced as a passive right of veto but an active right to choose."
Mr Prodi's own responsibilities appear relatively light - the Commission secretariat and legal service and, significantly, media relations - but he will next week announce that he intends also to assume a major role in economic policy co-ordination and in foreign policy.
No one should be fooled. Mr Prodi has signalled already, through his intense involvement in the selection of the team, and in warnings yesterday that he will not hesitate to sack or reshuffle erring members, that he is to be seen as more than primus inter pares. The Santer years of benign neglect, of leaving each commissioner to his own devices until the waves of the next crisis came crashing over the whole college, are over.
This is all much more akin to the role of a genuine prime minister than we have seen since Delors.
But some of the appointments have certainly raised eyebrows.
The Transport Commissioner, Mr Neil Kinnock, a reasonable success in his current portfolio, has never in the past had to demonstrate the sort of delicate yet decisive managerial skills which root-and-branch reform of the Commission will require. This key priority of the Commission has been entrusted to a vice-president.
It will be the making or unmaking of this whole Commission, and Mr Kinnock is an unlikely Robespierre in the face of the entrenched might of the Commission's unions and formidable directors-general.
And putting a French man in charge of trade, in the conventional wisdom of Brussels, is akin to getting a Bourbon to work the guillotine. Particularly just ahead of a new round of world trade talks.
Mr Pascal Lamy's appointment has raised eyebrows not only in Brussels but in Washington where it will be interpreted as a sign of stormy times and protectionist tendencies ahead. Yet perhaps Mr Prodi is taking a leaf from Machiavelli in his appointment. Who better to sell an uncomfortable, liberalising trade deal to the French than a French man?
Mr Lamy, the respected former chef de cabinet to Mr Delors, and reputedly a master of detail, has helped to save Credit Lyonnais since leaving the Commission. But he is also certain to face a grilling at the parliamentary hearings over his personal responsibility under Delors for some of the administrative shambles that forced the Commission to resign.
The report of wise men pointed a particular finger at his neglect of the Commission's security service resulting in outrageous featherbedding and infiltration by the far right.
The return of the Finnish Budget Commissioner, Mr Erkki Liikanen, responsible for personnel and internal reform in the current Commission, is also likely to grate with MEPs, although Mr Prodi kept the number of returnees down to four.
Mr Prodi defended his appointment of the German Socialist, Mr Gunther Verheugen, to the enlargement dossier in response to the journalist who said "but there is a German agenda". It would very much surprise him, he said, if any of the large countries did not have an agenda for all of the dossiers.
The German enlargement agenda is seen as a strong desire to ensure long transition periods before full free movement of labour, but Verheugen's appointment may, like Lamy's, make what needs to be done, accession of three or four countries in 2003, more palatable at home.
Mr Chris Patten's external relations portfolio appears prestigious and his role in co-ordinating the work of several commissioners should in theory give him much influence, but it could be a poisoned chalice.
He may be squeezed between a President who has expressed considerable interest in foreign policy and has already taken to pronouncing on the issue, and the Amsterdam Treaty's new creation, the Secretary-General for Common Foreign and Security Policy, "Mr CFSP", Mr Javier Solana, currently NATO Secretary-General.
Mr Solana will be battling to carve out new space for himself, and Mr Patten's fellow commissioners are likely to warn him that, although chairman of their external relations group, he better keep off their individual patches.
And the appointment of the first Green Commissioner, the German, Ms Michaele Schreyer, to the budget portfolio may disappoint their MEPs who will be on a collision course with her from the start.
There is wide praise for the appointment of Spain's experienced Mr Pedro Solbes, a former president of the Ecofin Council, as head of monetary affairs, and for the move of Italy's Mr Mario Monti from the internal market to competition, a very tough, technical and political job. Both will be key figures in the new regime.
And the experience of the returning, respected Mr Franz Fischler to his old farm dossier (with fisheries added in to the amusement of many - the Austrian can truly claim not to have a domestic agenda!) will also help in the trade talks.
The eurosceptical and rightwing leader of the Dutch Liberals, seen as a bit of a loose cannon, takes over Mr Monti's old job to cheers from Mr McCreevy's Department of Finance. Ireland could hardly have asked for better in its continuing battle against tax harmonisation. And Dublin will not be unhappy to see the French Mr Michel Barnier in the regional affairs dossier.
Both Denmark's Mr Poul Nielson and Portugal's Mr Antonio Vitorino bring solid reputations in their respective fields of development and justice.
Overall it is a team which Mr Prodi claimed, with some justice, would certainly shine against any national cabinet. It certainly has fewer dodos than the Santer team.
There is no doubt, too, that Mr Prodi has started on the right foot by rationalising the portfolios, eliminating the sort of ridiculous overlap or inconsistency, particularly in foreign policy, that had arisen in the Santer commission when, to placate particular egos, the globe had been carved up like a cake between five commissioners.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. They have a formidable agenda from internal reform to enlargement to the rebuilding of the Balkans to the trade round, and Mr Prodi's revolutionaries are raising enormous expectations about bringing Brussels back to the citizens of Europe. Much will depend on Mr Prodi's own drive and political nous, combined with a strong element of luck.
But Mr Prodi endeared himself to more than one hack in declaring that henceforth the Commission's 24 directorates would no longer be known by their numbers but by their functions. "I refuse to learn those numbers," he said to cheers from those for whom the relative roles of DG17 and DG22 are still a mystery.
At last the common touch!