Peter Mandelson came to the European Commission hoping to advance the cause of open trade. He promised to remake EU trade policy and, as he put it early on in a landmark speech, "put trade at the service of the development". But his four-year tenure was marked by a series of running battles with recalcitrant EU member states and negotiating partners.

Mr Mandelson's successor, Baroness Ashton, leader of the UK House of Lords, inherits a difficult legacy, with the so-called "Doha round" of trade talks in limbo and a new Commission to be appointed next year. Joe Guinan, trade analyst at the German Marshall Fund think-tank in Brussels, says: "Whoever takes over risks starting off as a lame duck, never mind ending up as one."