The French seem to hope that Mr Lamy will be offered the competition portfolio.
Left to themselves, Mr Lamy and Mr Zoellick could probably sort out these spats.
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Moreover, it is far from clear that Mr Lamy has abandoned his own political ambitions.
Will Mr Lamy himself stay beyond his four-year term, which ends in September 2009?
But Mr Lamy will at least have inside knowledge of how far the EU can be pushed.
But then, Mr Lamy, who says he is still a socialist, is known to believe in lost causes.
Hedge funds, as Mr Lamy points out, have an appetite for buying debt but only at distressed prices.
Together, Mr Zoellick and Mr Lamy have settled fights on subjects ranging from bananas to copyright on Irish music.
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Since Mr Lamy is a French socialist, Mr Chirac may be reluctant to reappoint him as France's lone commissioner.
Both Mr Lamy and Robert Zoellick, his opposite number in America, are playing down the significance of these disputes.
Close to Lionel Jospin, the French prime minister, Mr Lamy will want one of the big economic or foreign jobs.
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Mr Lamy and Mr Zoellick may be fleet of foot, but India and the G22 look to be digging in their heels.
But Mr Lamy's outfit can do little about the biggest looming threat to free trade, which comes from the crisis in the euro zone.
Since the administration needs Congress to grant Mr Bush trade-promotion authority to negotiate a new trade round, Mr Zoellick's relationships with congressmen may be pitted against his friendship with Mr Lamy.
ECONOMIST: A ruling against America aggravates trade tensions
Clever, pragmatic Frenchmen like Mr Lamy, or Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Mr Jospin's finance minister, who understand the need to embrace globalisation yet belong to a political culture that instinctively rejects it, inhabit a peculiar double world.
"The events of 2012 should serve as a reminder that the structural flaws in economies that were revealed by the economic crisis have not been fully addressed, despite important progress in some areas, " Mr Lamy said.
From a wealthy Normandy family (a photograph of the family chateau unapologetically decorated his office wall in Brussels), Mr Lamy may not share Mr Delors's sentimental affection for the peasantry, but his political antennae are just as sharp.
Though his thuggish networking often nettled those who worked with him in Brussels, where he was feared and disliked by many a Eurocrat, Mr Lamy's ease in both the American and European political cultures could prove an asset, though not a clinching one, in trade disputes.
"As long as global economic weakness persists, protectionist pressure will build and could eventually become overwhelming, " Mr. Lamy said.
France may offer Pascal Lamy, chief of staff to Jacques Delors when Mr Delors was the commission's president.
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