Brussels  - There will be no slackening of work at the European Commission when its mandate expires at the end of the month, even though no new commission will be ready to replace it, officials in Brussels insisted Friday.

"If there is no new commission, which will evidently be the case, the current commission will stay as a caretaker of day-to-day business ... We will deal with everything that has to be dealt with," commission spokesman Johannes Laitenberger said.

The commission is the European Union's executive. Its task is to propose new EU laws and to make sure that everybody in Europe obeys the current ones.

The current commission's mandate expires at the end of the month, but EU member states and the European Parliament have not been able to appoint its successor because they do not know which rules to use.

EU leaders had hoped to make the appointment under the rules of the bloc's Lisbon Treaty, but the treaty is currently blocked in the Czech constitutional court, with no decision expected before October 27 at the earliest.

That means that there will not be enough time for member states and the parliament to nominate, interrogate and swear in a new commission before the end of the month, even if the Czech court clears the document and Czech President Vaclav Klaus signs it - something which is by no means clear.

That, in turn, has led to fears that the EU could find itself rudderless at a time when it is trying to deal with major issues such as the financial crisis and climate change.

But Laitenberger insisted that there will be "no lame-duck commission," since a caretaker commission "can make the legislative proposals that need to be made."(dpa)