Although there was only one subject on all minds, it was business as usual at the Commission yesterday morning despite the mass resignation of the EU's executive political leadership.
There was even a meeting of the Commission itself to draft the text of a statement explaining that they were going under protest.
The Treaty provides that a resigning commission will continue to serve in a caretaker role until a new college is appointed by member-states. Crucially, the key power of the Commission to initiate legislation or proposals to ministers is unaffected legally by its new status.
That is particularly important in the context of the Agenda 2000 negotiations which are supposed to come to a conclusion next week at the summit in Berlin. While member-states may toss around ideas for a compromise, only the Commission can put a proposal for agreement or amend it.
In the fine-tuning of compromises the Commission plays a key role, both in balancing the interests of individual member-states with a notional common good and in number-crunching on various options.
There are some fears that this brokering role will be disrupted this week by other concerns, although diplomatic sources were confident the preparation for Berlin will still be made.
Yet, although the caretaker Commission's legal powers are unaffected by its caretaker role, politically things are very different. The Commission's President, Mr Jacques Santer, admitted as much yesterday at his press conference.
"I believe that we will have to take into account our new status and therefore limit our new initiatives," he said. That means anything not already firmly in the decision-making pipeline will go on hold, to the chagrin of some commissioners.
Mr Flynn, for one, complains that he will not be able to proceed with two pieces of legislation on racism and discrimination in the labour markets.
How long the caretaker role will continue is a matter now of some dispute, with the Spanish suggesting that the Commission should be allowed to serve out its full term to the end of the year and the parties in parliament demanding that they should be out within a matter of weeks.
A complicating factor is the June European elections. Were governments simply to bring forward to April or May the nomination of a new commission that was expected to serve until 2005 then the parliamentary hearings on the new commission would have to take place in front of the outgoing MEPs. Hardly a very democratic procedure.
But allowing a Commission that has resigned to continue to serve well into the autumn to allow for parliamentary hearings in front of the new MEPs would be deeply controversial. Instead, the parliamentary groups yesterday unanimously proposed that there should be a short caretaker period, with the current Commission to be followed by a "transition" commission to serve until 2000, followed by the appointment of another commission for five years.
This "three commissions" option would mean agreement at or soon after Berlin to a "transition" president, a prospect that member-states do not find appealing, although perhaps inevitable. The name of the current Trade Commissioner, Sir Leon Brittan, has been mentioned and in this scenario he would be surrounded largely by the re-nominated "untainted" members of the Commission.
That option appears more realistic as a stop-gap measure, diplomats say, than attempting to get a rushed decision from heads of government for a longer-term appointment. It would also present the Government within a matter of a few weeks with a decision whether or not to reappoint Mr Flynn.