On the evening of November 19, European Union leaders will be hosted by Sweden at what may be described as the parlour game, "Name the President".
 
It is a game involving brinkmanship, tradeoffs, elements of poker, but not necessarily a time limit; like many decision-making processes in the EU, carrying on until the wee hours, with attendant exhaustion a factor in play, is part of the process.
 
The Swedish presidency of the EU hopes to use the evening to come up with the names of the full-time European Council President envisaged in the Lisbon Treaty, the High Representative for foreign policy, and the person who will head up the European Council’s secretariat.
 
If it can pull off this feat, given that a few days before the meeting uncertainty was prompting speculation that proceedings could go into extra time or even a postponement, then comes the process of identifying the line-up of nominees for the new European Commission.
 
Like all spectator sports, a term that may be used ironically given that some critics complain that the negotiations about nominees are somewhat opaque, there is betting, and no shortage of armchair pundits about who will take the top jobs.
 
However, the players do not have entirely free hands. There are various factors that come into play, including the stated notion that there should be an appropriate gender balance in the share-out of top jobs.
 
This latter factor is no easy one; among the names mentioned in speculation about the future European Council President, there is only one woman, Latvia’s former president Vaira Vike-Freiberga. Overall, unless the Presidency job is given to a woman, or the foreign affairs post, it would mean that all four senior positions – the other two being European Commission President and European Parliament President – would be held by men.
 
In addition to the stated desire to have EU leadership that is more representative in terms of gender, recent days have seen a public call on the issue, in a letter to the Financial Times by current European commissioners Margot Wallstrom and Neelie Kroes and European Parliament Vice President Diana Wallis. "We need a collective political commitment to ensure political representation of women".
 
Gender balance aside, there is another well-known factor expected to shape any deal about the European Council Presidency and EU foreign affairs posts – that they should be shared out between the two major gene pools in the bloc, the centre-left and centre-right.
 
For the post of European Council President, the names currently being mentioned most frequently are Belgian prime minister Herman van Rompuy, from the centre-right, Netherlands prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende, Vike-Freiberga; the names previously most-mentioned, those of UK former prime minister Tony Blair and Luxembourg prime minister Jean-Claude Juncker, seemed to be ebbing in the stakes. Among those with outside chances is Finland’s former prime minister, Paavo Lipponen.
 
Several observers expect that the process may see the nominee for the foreign affairs post decided first. Here, frontrunners have been said to include Italian former prime minister Massimo D’Alema (media reports have suggested that there are reservations about him for what is perceived as a track record of an anti-Israel stance), serving Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn, Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt, a British former commissioner Peter Mandelson and Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton, the last-mentioned meeting two criteria by being centre-left and a woman.
 
The Lisbon Treaty will continue the practice that each EU state gets a commissioner, but much about the future make-up of the commission remains uncertain. What is certain so far is that Portugal has its place in the shape of EC President Jose Barroso, and whoever becomes "foreign minister" will ex officio be a Vice President of the EC. The rest is murky, in part because not all countries have gone public with their candidates.
 
The known candidates for the new European Commission are Austria’s Johannes Hahn, said to be seeking a science-related portfolio, Germany’s Guenther Oettinger, Androulia Vassilou of Cyprus, Luxembourg’s Viviane Reding (currently telecoms commissioner), current EC Vice President Siim Kallas of Estonia, current Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia of Spain, Italy’s Antonio Tajani, currently Transport Commissioner, Romania’s Dacian Ciolos, and Slovenia’s Janez Potocnik.
 
Others are known to have been put forward by their respective backers for the same jobs Slovakia’s Maros Sefcovic and Bulgaria’s Roumyana Zheleva are both known to have their energy portfolio on their wish list; currently it is held by Latvia’s Andris Piebalgs, who has been re-nominated.
 
Zheleva is also known to want something in the enlargement/regional policy field, while Czech nominee, that country’s EU affairs minister Stefan Fuele, has let it be known that he is interested in the energy, enlargement or transport portfolios.
 
Hungary has put forward Laszlo Andor, a centre-leftist and a board member of the EBRD as well as being an economics graduate, but no public announcement has been made about the portfolio he wants.
 
The process, however, does not stop with the final list worked out by the Swedish EU presidency and EC President Barroso.
 
After the list is finalised, candidate Commissioners will be interviewed by the relevant portfolio committees of the European Parliament, having first answered written questionnaires, and provided the committees with their CVs and declarations of financial interests.
 
While journalists are over-fond of the word "grilled", grabbed out of the cliché bag every time anyone appears before any legislature’s committee, the European Parliament’s job interviews of would-be commissioners are something more than formalities. In 2004, MEPs refused to endorse Italy’s Rocco Buttiglione, forcing the nomination of a changed list of candidate Commissioners.
 
This is one of the complications. The European Parliament’s options are all-or-nothing; it must accept the full list or reject it wholesale, meaning that if sufficient MEPs find any one candidate Commissioner unacceptable, the process of parliamentary approval – which in current circumstances is expected to start in January 2010 – goes back to the nomination stage.