Commission old hands still remember the scandal when the former European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services Frits Bolkestein, joined, immediately after leaving office, the Russian Bank Menatep’s international consultative council (then owned by the controversial Russian magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky), and also started working for Shell, the British-Dutch petrol company.

Bolkestein (who had been in charge of the Internal Market and Services) was then covered by Barroso, but it was ag...