It's a big year for the European Union: the bloc has embraced two new member states and welcomed another into the single currency. The EU now stretches from the Atlantic to the Black Sea, following the accession of Romania and Bulgaria on 1 January 2007. On the economic front, Slovenia becomes the thirteenth country to join the single currency, bringing the Eurozone's population to over 316 million.

As if these events weren't significant enough, the EU is also marking 50 years since the signing of the Treaty of Rome. On 25 March 1957, France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg signed into existence the European Economic Community, the main forebear of the EU.

On top of that, 'Erasmus', the EU's student exchange programme, turns twenty this year. In the past two decades, it has sent around 1.5 million students on their year abroad in what has become a new frontline as well as the simplest example of European integration.

Troubles Old and New
Yet these milestones come at a time of chronic structural weaknesses for the bloc. Now weighing in at 27 members, the EU is in dire need of new rules to govern its everyday functioning. The December 2005 budget crisis was a case in point, with among others France and Britain locking horns over the much-vilified Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the much-resented UK rebate.

The deadlock was eventually broken by marathon overnight horse-trading, smoothed by the mediating skills of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. But in the current EU malaise, the leaders of founding member states appear to be part of the problem as much as part of the solution.

Take, for example, Turkey's stalled accession bid: counter to the official EU line Merkel would prefer a 'privileged partnership', while French Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy - a top runner for this year's French Presidential elections - is openly opposed to Ankara's membership. By contrast, after the December 2006 EU summit voted to freeze talks on 8 out of 35 chapters, British Prime Minister Tony Blair flew straight to Ankara to underline his solidarity with the Turkish government (thus snubbing his counterparts/opponents in Europe).

Even before the accession of Romania and Bulgaria, the EU was said to be suffering 'enlargement fatigue', not least because of its limited 'absorption capacity' - ie "the capacity to act and decide according to a fair balance within institutions; respect budgetary limits; and implement common policies that function well and achieve their objectives," according to Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel. In other words, the bloc needs a Constitution to rationalize decision-making. Without one, it will face ever greater gridlock.

However, the initial text was rejected by French and Dutch voters in two separate referenda in 2005, exploding key plans to limit national vetoes and introduce more qualified majority voting. The main architect of the EU Constitution, Former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, took much of the blame for its failure.

And rightly so, with many of its 470 pages ranging from high-flown legal poetry to cluster bomb EU jargon, expressing more the arrogance of the EU elite than the need to streamline the functioning of EU institutions. This impression was reinforced when Giscard d'Estaing told his co-authors that their countrymen would someday "build statues of you on horseback".

Crossing the Impasse
In his end of year diary, the BBC's Mark Mardell compared the EU to Samuel Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot'. Some of the endless circular debates are reminiscent of an absurdist drama, a theatre in limbo - but this year's events in Romania, Bulgaria and Slovenia show that concrete steps forward are still being taken.

Yet the analogy takes on a different light when set against the chronically medieval CAP, ever-obscure accounting procedures (the Court of Auditors failed to sign off for the twelfth year in a row), the wasteful charade of a two-seat European Parliament, and claims that key EU figures turned a blind eye to CIA 'renditions' and gulags in Europe. On this last point, however, an investigation led by MEP Claudio Fava shows how the EU's checks and balances are working and that its key principles (enshrined for example in the Convention on Human Rights) are being actively defended.

Merkel, who chairs the EU Presidency in the first half of this year, has set herself ambitious goals to break the impasse on the EU Constitution. As part of this, she has plans to issue a 'Berlin Declaration' at a leaders' meeting on 25 March. This with a view to "kickstarting the European Union" via a debate on what unites us, how to improve integration and how to overcome the challenges facing Europe in this globalized world. But on the thorny issues of Turkey and the EU Constitution, I wouldn't hold your breath (though I would bet on EU officials talking themselves blue in the face, to match the EU flag).

Still, what's the alternative - might is right? Ultimately, talking in circles is better than cycles of violence. An EU that insists on dialogue and international law is a better model for 21st century international relations than a hegemonic, hypocritical Pax Americana, epitomised by the last few decades in Iraq and Israel.

Many would argue that Western Europe owes a debt of thanks to the USA, for the decades that it provided a security guarantee after WWII. However, after two massive paradigm shifts - the end of the cold war and the start of the war on terror - others say that European states are better off NOT following the USA into myopic, unilateral wars in the Middle East (read for example, Robert Fisk and Noam Chomsky).

The past 50 years are for Western Europe and more recently the states of the former Warsaw Pact proof of the rewards of international law and multi-lateral diplomacy, however tortuous they may seem. With all its tangled institutions, the EU is more like a grapevine than a bed of roses; but it still seems to be growing in the right direction.

Howard Hudson,
3 January 2007