Consumed with powers

The European Commission's doughtiest crusader looks set for new conquests. Italian-born Emma Bonino, rated as a first-class act even by those on the conservative wing of the Commission, may well be vested with huge new responsibilities-protecting the EU's 375m consumers.

Bonino already handles three jobs, as commissioner for fisheries, the EU's aid programme and consumer policy. She admits to concentrating her time on saving starving refugees and depleted fish stocks. Her consumer responsabilities she describes as the Cinderella of her portfolios; with a budget of Ecu 19m for consumer affair and a staff of 76 (the Commission's agricultural directorate, has 828 staffers and a budget of Ecu 40bn) she laks money, people and power. Bonino would'n take the new job without having much more of all three.

The only question is whether she is up to the EU's powerful farm lobby, praticised as it is at protecting its own. She's obviously tough, having once defied a Sudanese ban on humanitarian aid flights; her plane dodged an airforce landing strip to land at a refugee camp, leading to the resumption of aid.

She is also no mean lobbyst herself, havin spent in the distant past weeks in an Italian jail as part of a succesful campaign to legalise abortion.