FIRST VICE-PRESIDENT for Better Regulation, Inter-Institutional Relations, the Rule of Law and the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Frans Timmermans’ full title echoes Gilbert and Sullivan’s parody figure Pooh-Bah in “The Mikado”. But for some, including the press in Mr Timmermans’ native Netherlands, a simpler moniker applies: Dr No. The bureaucratic ring of Mr Timmermans’ official description belies the formidable challenge of his role, which is to get Europe to do less.

Since November Mr Timmermans, a former Dutch diplomat and foreign minister, has served as number two to the most powerful player in the European bureaucracy: Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission (the European Union’s executive arm). Mr Timmermans, Mr Juncker said, would be his “right hand”. In fact he has been more of a sponge, soaking up difficult issues as they arise, from sustainable development to a controversial article in a transatlantic trade deal.

His trickiest task is to ensure that Brussels’s legendary appetite for rule-making is kept in check. In a series of “confessionals” last year, Mr Timmermans asked each of his colleagues to make the case for their legislative priorities. Those that failed to satisfy him were axed. The resulting “work programme” for 2015 had just 23 items, a fraction of previous years’ lists. Eighty pending proposals were withdrawn. A review of existing EU law is under way, with a view to cutting red tape.

This is an unfamiliar approach in an organisation where “more Europe” often serves as a secular creed. Mr Timmermans insists his job is about getting Europe to work better, not acting as deregulator-in-chief. But his approach has riled Eurocrats and members of the European Parliament. The biggest challenge, says Mr Timmermans, has been tackling the “Brussels logic”, according to which policymakers do not obstruct projects they consider useless for fear of seeing their own ideas squashed. It will take time, he says, to change the culture of “an administration that has for generations believed that its purpose is to create legislation.”

As an example of the overreach he wants to tackle, Mr Timmermans ridicules a failed attempt by the EU to regulate the use of olive-oil jugs in restaurants. His instincts play well in Britain, which is preparing for its own debate on the role of the EU. David Cameron, the Tory prime minister, has pledged to renegotiate Britain’s membership should he retain power after an election in May, before holding an in/out referendum. Some have suggested that Mr Timmermans should take charge of any talks with Britain. That is just speculation, he says. As Dutch foreign minister, he also expressed scepticism about Mr Cameron’s motives in seeking a new deal. But his presence in the senior ranks of the commission will reassure pro-European Britons that their message will find receptive ears. The mandarins in Britain’s civil service were delighted by his appointment.

European countries worried about Russian aggression were similarly cheered. Last July, when Russian-backed rebels in south-eastern Ukraine shot down a civil airliner carrying 298 people, including almost 200 Dutch citizens, Mr Timmermans, as foreign minister, made an impassioned speech in the UN Security Council urging the return of the victims’ remains. One Brussels-based diplomat credits this intervention with unifying the EU behind a tougher line on Russia.

Yet if the EU has held together on sanctions, it has floundered on a broader strategy. Mr Timmermans knows Russia well. In 1991, during a diplomatic stint in Moscow, he holed up in a government building during an attempted coup, talking to local MPs and diligently dispatching reports back to The Hague. Today, he suggests, if Europe is struggling to work out how best to deal with Vladimir Putin, it is because most countries stopped paying attention after the end of the cold war. “Rediscovering what’s happening in Russia has come as a shock to many capitals,” he says.

The soothsayer of subsidiarity

For years the EU has been in firefighting mode, battling to hold the euro together or reacting to unrest in its neighbourhood. These emergencies have consumed energy and resources, but also raised awkward questions about where the limits of European power should be drawn. Across Europe grumpy voters have been turning to populist parties that assail Brussels for its bureaucratic excesses. The assignment granted to Mr Timmermans thus represents a double gamble. First, that the EU can reform itself in the teeth of crisis. And second, that the forces behind greater integration, particularly in the economy, need not spill over into areas best left to national, or even local, governments. Euro-zone countries may need more fiscal co-ordination, but the EU does not have to have the same tax rates (or olive-oil rules).

Fluent and more-or-less accentless in six European languages, fiercely ambitious and the proud owner of a formidable intellect, Mr Timmermans is well placed to take on Brussels’s bureaucratic machine. But he can expect resistance. “He’s up for a rough ride,” warns one sceptical MEP. A recent row with the European Parliament over his decision to withdraw a “circular economy” (ie, recycling) plan may portend more trouble ahead.

If Mr Timmermans has a weakness, say observers, it is a scratchy vanity that can rub colleagues up the wrong way. He always thinks he knows best, says a former colleague, and, even more troubling, he usually does. But if his ambition sometimes tips into arrogance, that may not be the gravest sin in a place that too often takes pride in consensus over conflict. In the original book, Dr No, who had grand plans of his own, saw them thwarted when he was buried alive under a heap of bird guano. Europe’s bureaucrats and lawmakers may not be too fond of him, but Mr Timmermans should at least escape that fate.