Irish voters decide the fate of the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty on October 2, and how they vote will determine – among several other things – how the game of musical chairs that is the selection process for European Commissioners is decided.

As it is, the politics of the choice of Bulgaria’s commissioner and what portfolio that commissioner may hold have changed since the country joined the European Union at the beginning of 2007.

Domestically, a different government is in power in Sofia and Prime Minister Boiko Borissov has made it clear that Meglena Kouneva, a member of Simeon Saxe-Coburg’s National Movement for Stability and Progress (NMSP) and the nominee of the now-defunct tripartite coalition in which Saxe-Coburg’s party participated, should be looking for another job.

Borissov, who has said that he will announce Bulgaria’s candidate commissioner on October 3, has gone so far as to say that the candidate will be from his party, GERB, and will be a woman – a statement generally interpreted as confirmation of speculation that the name will be that of Roumyana Zheleva, currently Foreign Minister.

While the NMSP described Kouneva as a "national asset" and while she has rated highly in domestic opinion polls and was named "Commissioner of the Year" in 2008, none of this has signified much for Borissov, who fired a parting shot at the previous government by saying that Kouneva had remained silent about its failings.

Observers frequently have criticised Kouneva for, while serving competently as a European cabinet minister and speaking for Brussels on important issues within her consumer affairs portfolio, failing to act as a lobbyist at EC headquarters for Sofia.

Much more has changed than just the NMSP’s plummet from political influence. Bulgaria has had bad press in Europe after EU accession, and statements like those of then-prime minister Sergei Stanishev and incumbent President Georgi Purvanov that Bulgaria should get the EU energy portfolio seem somewhere between presumption and downright hubris.

Further, like many cabinets, the way that portfolios are handed out is an index of individual political clout and not necessarily expertise in the field. This is why Bulgaria is not alone in the process of first coming up with a name and then seeking a portfolio, with a list in descending order of choice.

Beyond that, the Treaty of Nice, which remains in force pending the fate of the Lisbon Treaty, already said that after the expansion of the bloc to 27 members, the number of commissioners should be less than that – a change from the current situation where each member state has a commissioner. However, it remains unclear precisely what less than 27 means.

Lisbon, should it come into force, is much clearer – that from 2014, the College of Commissioners would be made up of two-thirds of the total sum of EU member states. With Bulgaria being anything but high in the political pecking order of the bloc, it would be making a hamstrung start in future games of musical chairs.

In the meantime, Borissov has set his sights on Bulgaria getting the regional policy portfolio, which includes the distribution of structural and cohesion funds, science, technology and innovation. Failing that, the enlargement portfolio (a scenario likely to make the anti-expansion lobby and the tabloid media of several countries, notably including the UK, go utterly hysterical) and European neighbourhood policy. The latter would mean, among other things, Bulgaria’s commissioner having a crucial role in dealings with former Soviet bloc states and other extremely sensitive cases on the fringes of the current EU outer border, again an area with which Sofia might not be trusted – and one that, in any case, overlaps to a significant degree with the current and future outlines of the job of the EU’s foreign policy and security chief.

The enlargement portfolio would, in the short term, mean dealing with the applications of Croatia and Iceland, neither especially difficult cases, but also with the longer-term and much more difficult and sensitive applications from Western Balkans states – notably Serbia – as well as Turkey.

Zheleva, who placed an extremely poor second in a poll among readers of mass-circulation daily Trud about whom they preferred as Bulgaria’s EC nominee (Kouneva got 52 per cent, Zheleva seven per cent) has spoken in interviews about her current job of aspiring to place Bulgaria "at the centre of European affairs" or various phrases to that effect.

Speaking to journalists in Brussels, she said that Bulgaria had interests in several areas including agricultural policy, regional policy, transport, energy and the environment but had yet to prove that it was an equal partner with a vision for EU policies.

Few would disagree with her, but given Bulgaria’s domestic track record of governing its own affairs and its continued shortcomings in meeting EU standards, Sofia has scant chance of arguing for a key portfolio on the basis of its expertise – and the commissioner that re-elected EC President Jose Barroso likes and respects, and is not alone in Brussels in doing so, is Kouneva – the one name that Borissov has said that he will not be putting forward.

Meanwhile, Borissov has said, before October 2 he will be consulting other EU states about a possible portfolio for Bulgaria; in the short-term, the game of musical chairs for seats on the European Commission is played that way, with some deal-making even before the music stops. In the future, however, the tune and the way that it is played will change.