It is little wonder that José Manuel Barroso is seldom seen without a grin on his face these days. For the European commission chief is one of the luckiest guys in international politics. First, the appointment of a low-profile Belgian as the EU's first permanent president has meant that Barroso will be able to keep on behaving as if he is the most powerful man in Brussels. And now, it looks likely that Barroso won't need to lose any sleep about assembling his new team of commissioners (even if they don't formally start work until January, a few months later than originally expected).

Theoretically, it's still possible that MEPs will cause him difficulties as they did in 2004, when they objected to the nomination of Rocco Buttiglione as justice commissioner because the Italian equated homosexuality with sin. The signals from the European parliament have been that if it wanted to embarrass Barroso this time around, it would take issue with the grotesque gender imbalance in the EU executive. However, the probability of this happening has lessened in the past few days as the final composition of his 27-strong team emerged. It features nine women – one more than the outgoing commission.

Like many men, I feel slightly ill-at-ease addressing gender issues. Yet it strikes me that anyone who believes in equality should applaud the campaign being run by the European Women's Lobby for more females to be appointed to top jobs. Not only would I be in favour of rules stipulating that there should be an equal representation of men and women in EU institutions, I feel that all the obstacles preventing a greater female participation in politics should be removed.

During the 1990s, I worked as a press officer for an Irish MEP who married and had a child following her election; when she inquired about the parliament's provisions for maternity leave, she was informed that it had none. I'm sure that steps have been taken to rectify this omission since then but the way that EU bodies operate in general (with debates continuing until midnight, for example) can hardly be considered as welcoming to people with young families.

That said, if there's one thing more important than having more women in politics, it's ensuring that policies are implemented that genuinely benefit women. And because most politicians of both genders can't be trusted, there's no guarantee that female leaders will introduce such policies.

Catherine Ashton, the new EU foreign minister, has held the trade portfolio until now. She has used this to forward an aggressive trade liberalisation programme drawn up by her predecessor, Peter Mandelson. This has involved pressurising a range of poor countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to open their markets to European goods and companies in a way that shows scant regards for the interests of small-scale farmers and industrial workers, many of them female. Ashton has been particularly adamant that "technical barriers" to trade should be scrapped; these "barriers" are frequently social and environmental laws that multinational firms regard as too onerous. And Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the external relations commissioner, has promoted closer relations with Israel, even as it subjected Palestinian women and children to an increasingly cruel occupation.

To a large degree, the hearings in the European parliament which Barroso's new team is required to undergo will amount to a tedious charade. The real power in Europe isn't wielded by MEPs or by unelected officials but by male-dominated corporations. If you don't believe me, here's an exercise I recommend. Click on the website of BusinessEurope, the umbrella group for major companies, and read a few of their policy papers. Then check the European commission's statements on the same subjects; if you can spot any substantial difference, you deserve a higher reward than I can afford to give you.

This week Barroso issued a "consultation paper", ostensibly designed to kick off a debate on what the EU's strategic goals should be for the coming decade. The top two priorities it identified were to improve the "knowledge-base" of the European economy and to ensure that its labour markets become more "flexible". Can it be a coincidence that Jürgen Thumann, the president of BusinessEurope, urged that the EU set exactly the same two priorities in a speech earlier this month?

Both Barroso and Thumann want lower wages (though not for themselves, of course) and measures that curb the influence of trade unions. The former seeks reforms on labour relations to make Europe more competitive, the latter indicates that it's necessary to "contain wage pressures" to stimulate exports. Despite their claims to the contrary, it seems that they wish to start a process whereby Europe's welfare states begin to implode, condemning millions of men, women and children to greater hardship. The commission's recent calls on many EU governments to cut public expenditure suggest, too, that this is its agenda.

Without doubt, Barroso will make some efforts on the public relations front to persuade us that he cares deeply about social and environmental issues. The expected appointment of a commissioner for climate change is one such ploy. Nobody should be fooled by these efforts, however. Barroso may be adept at smiling for the cameras but that's exactly what you'd expect from an actor reading a script written by the captains of industry.