After all the months of drama, it was over remarkably quickly. With 488 votes in favour, 137 against and 72 abstentions, the European Union acquired a new European Commission.

But it is not over. The story of the Barroso II European Commission has just begun.

It began on the floor of the European Parliament in Strasbourg on February 9, with the vote; or perhaps it began before then, when a swell of political opinion across the continent led to the ouster of Roumyana Zheleva, Bulgaria’s controversial Commissioner-designate, now gone but not quite forgotten, if only for the footnote she will forever be in the annals of political misfires; or perhaps it begins before these things, with the Lisbon Treaty and the scent of power that MEPs, Pavlov-like, are compelled to follow.

In Strasbourg on that largely cheerful Tuesday afternoon, there was scant hint of the drama that had preceded the vote on Barroso II, and perhaps historians one day may record it as an inconsequential beginning to the years that were to follow.

In his speech on the vote, Jose Barroso, now in office for a second term, exhorted MEPs: "Today, a new chapter in our European adventure opens".

But, in the other direction, as European parliamentary group leaders directed their remarks to Barroso, there was a different sense of adventure in the air, and it was not one in which the European Commissioners would have a monopoly of leadership.

Or a monopoly of who would still be standing by the time the end of the road was reached, due date October 31 2014. Or so the MEPs appeared to dare to hope.
The speeches by group leaders were mercifully brief, after all the months of delays, manoeuvres and waiting.

Joseph Daul, of the centre-right EPP-ED, was unequivocal in supporting the Commission. His was an expression of confidence that Barroso II was up to the challenges facing it which, helpfully, he enumerated.

The EU, Daul said, must project "what the EU is - a world leader on the measures of GDP, market size and contributions to international aid". Yet from Haiti to Iran, Afghanistan to Yemen, Cuba to transatlantic relations, the EU’s voice so far has "failed to match our aspirations", said Daul, urging an "ambitious programme" to remedy this.

Daul was unequivocal but the socialists and liberals were equivocal.

Socialist chief Martin Schulz complained that the Commissioners-designate had taken a "vow of silence" during the European Parliament confirmation hearings, a vow that he said had been imposed by Barroso, in order not to say anything wrong. Those who entered into a real dialogue with the European Parliament, such as Michel Barnier, Joaquin Almunia and Bulgaria’s Kristalina Georgieva, had "gained standing". The Commission needed to work as a college and must not be run like a "presidential system," Schulz said.

Lanky liberal Guy Verhofstadt, making eye contact with Barroso (who, flanked by his foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, appeared throughout proceedings to be hugely enjoying himself in spite of the subtly grim undertone of some of the messages directed to him) spelt out that liberal support for the Commission would be conditional, allowing no room for nuance or misinterpretation by emphasising "our support will be conditional".

The new Commission, Verhofstadt said, should be a "driving force for Europe" which, he told Barroso, had not been the case for the past five years (five years in which Barroso has been in charge of it, during his first term).

The liberal bloc wanted to see the Commission operating "as a real college", a reference to its formal title, the College of Commissioners, and fulfilling one main task: "to find an answer to the economic crisis and a workable strategy to Europe 2020. Don’t listen too much to member states," Verhofstadt said.

Barroso, on the face of it, was unperturbed by the description by Greens leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit of his Commission as a "coalition of hypocrites" and the confirmation that the Greens would be abstaining.

Cohn-Bendit thundered, in an inimitable, Green sort of way, that his group would not vote in favour of the Commission but added "don’t say those who don’t vote for you are against Europe". He promised the Commission his group’s support on various issues if it took the right action, for example on climate change or the regulation of financial markets, issues dear to Cohn-Bendit’s cohorts.

Among those adamantly against, Nigel Farage characterised (in this author’s interpretation) Barroso II as something of a Stalinist Politburo, albeit without the checks and balances.

In a peroration greeted with sustained ironic cheers and less graceful jeering, Farage said that Barroso II was "the new government of Europe, a government that with the Lisbon Treaty now has enormous powers" including "the ability now to use emergency powers to literally take countries over, and yet what we have heard from the European Parliament’s big group leaders this morning is the demand that you take even more powers." Farage said that "poor Greece" is "trapped inside the economic prison of the euro" and "the same is going to happen to Spain, to Portugal and to Ireland".

Speaking of powers, this was just the topic that the European Parliament busied itself with having voted Barroso II into office.

On February 9, the European Parliament approved a set of "key principles" to be implemented in the co-operation agreement governing relations between the EP and the Commission.

Parliament and the Commission are currently revising the framework agreement that defines relations between the two institutions, including their political responsibilities, the flow of information and legislative co-ordination.

Among several other points, Commissioners will face a new-style Question Time, but – potentially crucially, but only potentially – if the European Parliament asks the EC President to fire a Commissioner, "he must seriously consider whether to require the resignation of the Commissioner or explain his refusal to do so before Parliament in the following plenary session," in the phrasing of a European Parliament statement.

It is this principle that signals a departure from the all-or-nothing deal with which MEPs have been presented before, and may, in the long term, mean that the European Parliament could oust a single Commissioner while the rest carry on along the difficult road to 2014. Inasmuch as the European Parliament gained a new excitement and relevance by borrowing from their United States cousins the practice of confirmation hearings (by so doing, in the Zheleva case, taking up bandwidth on YouTube, as one MEP alluded to during statements on the vote) but also, to borrow another image from American popular political culture – if you have decided on the colour of the curtains, do not be too complacent about having five years unchallenged to admire them. MEPs may want you out, Barroso would have to explain why you should stay, if he even agrees that you should, and no one wants to feature on YouTube for the wrong reasons.