At his confirmation hearing, the Commissioner-designate for relations with the European Union’s neighbours and would-be members, Johannes Hahn, himself highlighted the principal question- mark about his suitability: he lacks “diplomatic” experience, he acknowledged.

His next remark showed what his instinctive response will be: “I don’t want to be a bull in a china shop.” He was no bull and he broke no china in an accomplished performance before the European Parliament’s foreign-affairs committee (AFET) on Tuesday (30 September).

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He had studied the main issues and some of the footnotes about the 16 countries in the EU’s neighbourhood and the eight countries seeking membership of the EU. He did not pander to MEPs; nor did he become riled by them. He had acquired some of the better, familiar phrases common to EU officials and diplomats; he also knew when to deploy them.

Hahn had done his homework, and with that much of the job was done, because once AFET’s members had covered the countries of particular interest to them, the time available for personal probing (not something MEPs showed any inclination toward), for cross-cutting policy questions and for strategic questions had shrunk. Hahn, though, had another challenge: since MEPs cluster around headline issues, commissioners-designate therefore need to identify the issues that they will need to detoxify.

It was not hard for Hahn to identify them. The first was the Ukraine crisis, which he immediately said would be his first priority. The second headline – in a pattern that is now becoming familiar – was generated by the incoming Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker. Juncker had announced that there would be “no further enlargement” before 2019 and that Hahn should focus on the EU’s southern and eastern neighbourhoods – raising the spectre that the Commission will neglect the EU’s would-be members and happily allow enlargement to become a target for populists. Hahn was emollient. His catchphrase – “quality before speed” – risked sounding empty, but he gave it some substance.

The messages that diplomats are likely to take away are, firstly, that he will focus on making the economic benefits of EU integration more visible in ‘enlargement’ countries, something that he will try to do by using his experience managing the EU’s regional policy to push through infrastructure and other projects. Secondly, he said he was an advocate of “brain circulation”, a phrase that suggested that he will push for more visa liberalisation – a point that MEPs failed to clarify. But Hahn’s call for students from south of the Mediterranean to be included in Erasmus Plus – the EU’s ‘education plus’ mobility scheme – effectively commits him to making it easier for many of the EU’s neighbours to visit the EU.

MEPs seemed averse to making any connection between Hahn’s status as Austria’s commissioner-designate and Austrian foreign policy, with the result that observers will have emerged with no knowledge that Austria’s policy towards Russia – with knock-on effects for Ukraine – is softer than soft. But, importantly, Hahn avoided evasion and ambiguity on Russia when he said that “for Europeans, there can be no middle ground” on Ukraine’s territorial integrity. He was, though, evasive about two states that, unlike Russia, fall within the region for which he is responsible: Israel and Palestine.

Repeatedly, he suggested that MEPs should save their questions for Federica Mogherini, the incoming EU foreign-policy chief, whom MEPs will have a chance to question next week. In the process, he created a question that he will have to answer in practice: will he emerge from the shadow of Mogherini (and, for that matter, Juncker)? He also left a question-mark over the upcoming review of the EU’s neighbourhood policy.

He seems inclined to re-model it as a variation of the EU’s regional policy (with elements of programmes such as Erasmus thrown in). But, to use Hahn’s description, the EU faces a “ring of fire” around its borders, from Ukraine and Syria to Libya. Hahn will have to become a diplomat; the EU’s approach to the neighbourhood cannot simply be technocratic. The easy manner in which he handled the foreign-affairs committee suggested the former municipal politician will achieve the transition to diplomacy. But a hearing before the European Parliament is small beer compared to the burning, and frequently explosive, problems that await him.