One of the trickier image problems for the people who run the European Union is that the bloc’s founding, over-arching aim has been so comprehensively achieved that they struggle to remind the European on the street what the EU is for.
Even the most casual observer will have observed that, since the supra-national alliances from which the EU would germinate began to form in the 1950s, their members have not fought wars against one another.
But then, as Albert Camus, that early investigator of a pan-European identity, observed, in the end you get used to everything, and Brussels has had to fill its daily bulletins with something other than: "Europe continues not to bomb itself."
Instead, the European Commission’s latest offering is titled: "What did the EU do for me in 2006," a list a the 10 earth-moving changes the club has wrought in the lives of its 500m or so citizens this year, including cheaper mobile phone calls, better labelling on food and new chemical regulations.

Two inclusions on the list, however, mask divisions between the EU’s western founder members and the 10 new members that acceded in 2004.
The first is the much vaunted Galileo satellite project, which beamed its first test signal back to earth in January. The list’s explanation makes no mention of the vim that flowed at last week’s EU summit in Brussels, when new members accused their older counterparts - Britain and France chiefly - of reneging on a 2003 promise to give accession states priority for new EU agencies.
Mirek Topolanek, Czech premier, dashed off a hostile letter to the Finnish EU presidency saying objections to siting Galileo HQ in Prague on security grounds sent "unpleasant signals" to the new members. Eight western European cities, among them Cardiff, Strasbourg and Munich, are refusing to withdraw their bids.
Then there is the third inclusion on the EU’s list, the accession of Romania and Bulgaria, which were symbolically appended to a giant gingerbread map of Europe last week ahead of officially joining on New Year’s day.   
"After 15 years of bold and significant reforms, the two new countries are in a position to take on the rights and obligations of EU membership," the Commission says.
More cynical Bulgarians and Romanians might mutter that they are taking on plenty of the latter but not all of the former. Already, hundreds of meat producers and dairies have been told they will have to buck up their ideas before they can export to the common market, Sofia airport has been effectively quarantined, and both countries’ judiciaries will have Brussels’ beady eye trained on them for some time to come.
These restrictions are, of course, largely due to genuine safety concerns (through the meat ban also served to coax Moscow into dropping a threatened ban all EU meat from January 1).
Much more shameless are the curbs on Bulgarian and Romanian workers’ rights imposed by the UK, Spain and Ireland, with others expected to follow suit by the year’s end. When the festivities subside on January 1, this preliminary sleight may leave the EU’s latest 30m members wondering exactly what the club they have just joined will do for them in 2007.
Tom Burgis

December 22nd, 2006 in Identity | Permalink