I would say Abp. Job's statements logically follow from the premises of the current ecclesiology being offered in recent EP statements.
The most important statement, IMO, is the idea that, A) only an ecumenical council can grant autocephaly; B) pending an ecumenical council, the EP (and no one else) can grant a provisional, revocable autocephaly.
As far as I know, these ideas have been hinted at in previous EP statements but not stated together so clearly.
It's interesting in that, theoretically, it staves off accusations of "eastern Papism", because it recognizes the ecumenical council as a higher authority than the EP, yet also gives the EP tremendous power over the churches of Eastern Europe and the Balkans, which it regards as daughter churches whose autocephaly is only provisional.
Of course this power too is basically theoretical, since, without a friendly government and a sizable church faction, the EP has no teeth by which to enforce such claims. If the EP were to actually try and revoke the autocephaly of the churches in Russia, Serbia, etc. they would be met with derision. So the EP's only way to throw its self-understood weight around is these adventures with breakaway churches, with, again, the sponsorship of the local governments.
If, indeed, a council convenes to finally ratify the autocephaly of Russia, Bulgaria, etc. would the EP in fact be willing to accept it? Or will the Phanar's expert canonists find various reasons to deem the process irregular, uncanonical, invalid?
