One man race

Barroso was widely expected to win the vote in Strasbourg. He enjoyed the backing of the parliament's biggest faction, the conservative bloc, plus the unanimous support of the European Union's 27 heads of government.

The 53-year-old centre-right politician was the only candidate to stand for the post, though his bid was opposed by the parliament's second biggest faction, the Socialist bloc.

Of the assembly's 736 MEPs, 382 voted for the former Portuguese prime minister, and 219 against him. There were 117 abstentions.

Barroso only needed a simple majority to return to office, but he was keen to be re-elected by a strong margin to reinforce his mandate for reform.

"If you want a strong Commission, that stands up sometimes to member states, that stands up to national egoisms, you should give the Commission the strong support it takes (to do so)," Barroso said on Tuesday.

Barroso says his priorities are to tackle the financial crisis and strengthen the EU's clout on the international stage, and he warned MEPs before Wednesday's vote that Europe risked being "marginalised."

His critics among the Socialist, Liberal and Green factions accuse him of a lack of ambition and say he was too slow to react to the financial crisis.

On Tuesday, opposition MEPs complained that he had not done enough during his first term in office to warrant a second mandate.

The presidency of the European Commission represents some 500 million people across the 27 nations in the EU.

Barroso will now start choosing the 26 commissioners who will join him at the executive. According to the EU's current rules, each member state is entitled to one commissioner.

Rise to power

Barroso entered politics in 1973 as a left-wing, revolutionary student fighting against the then right-wing dictatorship in power in Portugal at the time. He was voted prime minister of the country in 2002 and held the position until assuming the role of EU Commission president in 2004.

Though Barroso started his political career leaning left, his views are now firmly cemented in the center-right of European politics. Still, he does in some cases lean towards a liberalism, often labelled by his opponents as "Anglo Saxon," that sometimes clashes with the beliefs of several French and German political parties that tend to be more sensitive when it comes to domestic industry issues.

Over the past year, Barroso has fought off attempts by many European capitals to use the economic crisis as a reason to change the European Union's "rule book."

French President Nicholas Sarkozy in particular has bumped heads with Barroso this year. The view from Paris was that Barroso was too slow in reacting to the financial crisis and needed to be prodded into action. Although the French President had earlier indicated that he did not fully support Barroso's reappointment and wanted to wait and see whether Ireland voted in favour of an EU reform treaty, Sarkozy backed down this June and went along with the decision of his fellow EU leaders to nominate Barroso for a second term.

nw/cs/Reuters/dpa/AFP
Editor: Susan Houlton