Just because he did not particularly want the job and has no European profile to speak of does not mean that Guenter Oettinger will turn out to be a *bad European commissioner. But it does speak volumes about how Berlin views Brussels.

German chancellor Angela Merkel seems to have surprised all with her choice of the Baden-Wuerttemberg minister president as the next German EU commissioner. Including the man himself, who duly said so.

The decision to send Oettinger to Brussels is widely interpreted as solving a personnel problem for the chancellor’s Christian Democrats (CDU). It gets rid of a politician who is doing poorly in the polls, and who is heading a region that has been badly affected by the economic crisis (economic growth is predicted to shrink by 8-9 percent this year) and allows in new blood. And all in time to turn things around before regional elections in 2011.

Domestically, very neat.

But it leaves a damaging wider impression of general disregard. Berlin showed only contempt for the European Commission in the way it went about choosing its next man about Brussels.

The domestically-dictated manoeuvring confirms the more standoffish relationship between Brussels and Berlin since the time Gerhard Schroeder, the previous chancellor, took over in 1998 and simply gives a German tinge to Brussels’ image of being a resting place for less-than-useful politicians.

But as the largest member state and part of the duo of countries that is needed to keep the spirit of the EU alive, the German chancellor has a wider European duty. Particularly now, as Europe plods along in its oddly reactive manner amid the economic crisis, lacking leadership and ideas.

So it leaves us with a few interesting questions in week that that is set to be full of interesting questions.

- Who will French president Nicolas Sarkozy propose?
- What will MEPs make of the German nominee when it comes to his hearing before MEPs
- And before that even, what will European commission president Jose Manuel Barroso make of it?

Barroso alone can divvy up the portfolios and his phone has been hopping with incoming calls as capitals lobby for a plum job in his commission. An EU official said the president already had a “pretty good idea” of which country will get what. Time will tell if there have been any last minute changes because of Berlin’s move.

* A good  commissioner, I think, is one with a European rather than a German representative (the incumbent social democrat Guenter Verheugen, in charge of industry, rather tipped the balance towards home), who has a good grasp of the dossier, can learn the EU ropes quickly and is politically astute.

And what of Slovakia?
The Slovak government came out with all guns firing last week wanting a Czech-type opt-out from the Charter of Fundamental Rights. The Swedish EU presidency, drowning in institutional flotsam, gave a rather terse response which could be summed up as ‘don’t even go there.’

Since then the Czech president Vaclav Klaus has indicated the Swedish proposal has given him the exit he apparently wanted to get off the Klaus-built Lisbon merry-go-round. But nothing from the Slovaks.

It turns out they have not yet seen what the Czechs are being offered. So they are engaging in a restrained silence. For the moment. But one EU official indicated that the solution might be a political statement that says that the charter will not affect “property rights” in any member state. This would accompany a separate Czech-specific statement.