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The quiet summer coup by the British has set off a fresh bout of soul-searching in Paris, where angst over lost influence at the heart of the European Union has become a part of daily discourse.

Jean-Pierre Chevènement, the former interior minister, said this week that France had been brushed aside with the dud job of transport commissioner while the Anglo-Saxon camp had walked off with all the prizes. "It's undeniable that the free-marketeers and Atlanticists have taken the lion's share in this commission," he told Le Figaro.

With job selection barely beginning for the next five-year term, the British have netted the powerful cabinet jobs in the external relations, budget and trade directorates.

The French are trailing so far with only one senior appointment: competition policy. It is a poor showing for a country that has always regarded the commission as a branch of its own civil service.

The British-led "counter-revolution" in Brussels has been gathering pace with the arrival of the Austrians, Swedes and Finns over the past decade, but it has now shifted into a higher gear after the "Big Bang" enlargement of the former communist states in Eastern Europe.

Michel Barnier, the foreign minister, tacitly acknowledged yesterday that France had paid a price for its high-handed treatment of the new EU states and failure to grasp that Paris no longer had the clout to impose diktats on Brussels.