Horrifically busy in the real world, hence the longest break in blogging on this site in more than six years. I am, however, still commenting away about the EU (among other things) in 140 characters or less on Twitter on a daily basis – that’s the best place to find me these days. You can get an RSS feed of my Twitter ramblings here – just be warned that it’s not all politics related, some of it’s personal, some of it’s very silly, and some of it’s very sweary.

Twitter has a wonderful ability to suddenly introduce you to new people – a 140 character limit meaning that you can read hundreds of different people’s opinions every day in a way that simply isn’t possible in long-form. If also means I’ve been coming across more ridiculous nonsense than I have in several years, as I keep getting alerted to stories and blog posts from sources I’d never normally come across by myself.

When these are EU-related, they’re normally incredibly familiar – the usual stories that get repeated year after year. Having, as I do, fairly extensive archives, I keep finding myself using old posts to rebut “new” stories – be it over the EU budget, the EU’s role in guaranteeing British freedom, the concept of an EU superstate. Along the way, I’ve got into arguments with anti-EU campaigners from the Taxpayers’ Alliance, the Bruges Group, OpenEurope and more.

It’s all great fun. A bit like blogging in the good old days, when I actually had time to read and comment on other blogs.

Having said that, I’m planning to start blogging again soon. I’m writing less and less in the day job these days (unless you count innumerable emails, Powerpoint presentations and planning documents), and am starting to get rusty.

There’s still a question of precisely what to write *about*, though. I’ve covered many of the broad EU issues – often several times. I have no time for party politics or the “personalities” of the Brussels bubble (something I’ve never been a part of anyway). I usually haven’t got the time – or expertise – for detailed policy analysis. And as entertaining as arguing with eurosceptics can be on Twitter, I prefer to keep the blog for considered argument and polite debate – turning the focus back to pointing out the flaws of eurosceptic arguments tends to attract the kind of responses I have no interest in dealing with.

And in any case, these days there are plenty of other EU bloggers to do that sort of thing – you can find them via Bloggingportal. (I remember when this here EUblogosphere were all fields – just me, EU Referendum (sadly increasingly shrill in its anti-EU vehemence these days), A Fistful of Euros, and a handful of others, now long since departed.)

So, back properly soon. Hopefully. At which point I’ll hopefully also find time to give this place a spring clean – some of the site’s code has broken, and a redesign is long overdue to make the text more readable. The only trouble is I’ve lost my FTP details, so can’t get in to change anything…

More egg nonsense, I’m afraid, but this was too good not to share. From the comments to inexplicably popular UK political blogger Iain Dale’s “you couldn’t make it up” post about the made-up story about the EU banning the selling of eggs by number:

“At June 29, 2010 10:45 AM, Roger Thornhill said…

@Douglas “The weight needs to be displayed. That is all.”

Replace “weight” with “yellow star” and the penny might just drop for you.

Yes, that’s right – someone whose chosen online pseudonym is the name of Cary Grant’s falsely-persecuted everyman in Hitchcock’s conspiracy thriller classic North by Northwest is comparing a regulation asking for food packaging to include an indication of the product’s weight to the start of the Holocaust.

First they came for the egg boxes, and I did not complain, for I was not an egg box…

As I say, sometimes it can be very hard to take eurosceptics seriously… This is now my new favourite stupid anti-EU comment of all time, swiftly overtaking one-time sensible anti-EU blogger Tim Worstall’s bizarre allegation that I simply *must* be in on the grand EU conspiracy – how else to explain someone saying that europhobic bullshit is, erm… europhobic bullshit? (Though to be fair on Tim, he’s only the latest in a long line of ranting maniacs to flatter my ego with suggestions that people might find me worth bribing.)

I do love writing about the EU sometimes – it has a wonderful tendency to bring out the very maddest in people.

Following the nonsense over the EU banning selling eggs by number, many have seized on the anonymous Food Standards Agency spokeswoman quoted by the Mail on Sunday as saying “This proposal would disallow selling by numbers. Retailers would not be allowed to put “Six eggs” on the front of the box. If it was a bag of rolls, it would say “500g” instead of six rolls.”

I asked the FSA for a clarification: At no point in the document is there any mention of labelling being forbidden in the way that your unnamed spokesperson claims. Yet this quote is now being used in numerous follow-up articles to justify outrage over a move that isn’t even being proposed… I would be most grateful for a statement to clarify the situation. Is it actually the FSA’s stated belief that the EU is planning to make labelling a box of six eggs with “Six Eggs” illegal, or was the unnamed spokesperson speaking out of turn?

I received the following response:

Since the report over the weekend in the Mail on Sunday re: FIR selling by number proposals, the FSA has now updated its position. I hope this makes things clear:

Consumers are used to buying some products such as eggs by number and we want to ensure this continues.

We will continue to press in Europe for the ability to sell food by number, ensuring it appears on the face of the proposals. This will provide clarity for both consumers and industry.

Not quite good enough, I thought, so I went back to them: Does the FSA still believe that the proposed legislation would disallow selling by numbers? A simple yes or no would be much appreciated. Their reply:

apologies if we appeared not to be answering your question. But it’s not a case of a yes or no answer. The draft regulation specifies the ways in which net quantity may be expressed, which does not include number [their emphasis]. The draft regulation does include a mechanism through which the Commission could allow some deviation from selling by weight or volume but we do not think this is clear enough.

We will continue to press for provisions in the regulation which would clearly enable food to be sold by number.

Please note “we do not think this is clear enough“. In my books, that’s not the same as the categorical “would“s of the original Mail quote.

They are, of course, technically correct. The draft legislation doesn’t make explicit mention of allowing eggs (or other foodstuffs) to be sold by number. But that is not the same as a ban – not by a long stretch. It seems the FSA has now realised this – but is reluctant to fully admit its schoolboy error.

(And yes, I am aware of the meme popular in certain anti-EU circles about Napoleonic Law versus Common Law and how the EU uses the former which only permits things explictly stated while the latter allows everything *except* things explicitly stated. It’s a load of ahistorical abject bollocks made popular by people who haven’t got the first clue about how EU Law actually works. In any case, it matters not a jot in this instance, as Britain (or, at any rate, England, Wales and Northern Ireland) still has its Common Law, and would therefore not be obliged to stop eggs being labelled by number even if the final version of this proposed legislation forgot to include an explicit opt-out.)

So, the EU is apparently planning to make it illegal to sell eggs by the dozen – or indeed to sell any products at all by number, instead forcing producers and retailers alike to sell only by weight.

“Utter madness!”, you cry. “How could anyone possibly be so stupid? It’s ridiculous!”

Yes. Yes it is ridiculous.

The story started (as far as I can tell*) in the europhobic Mail (over 1000 outraged comments and counting), before spreading to the usual suspects of the anti-EU blogs and the knee-jerk eurosceptics of Tory blogland – the latter starting with the classic cliche “You really couldn’t make it up”.

By the end of Monday, 28th June, the story had even spread to the BBC where, as of 10pm, it was ranking as the second most popular story on the site.

Shamefully for the BBC – supposedly a bastion of responsible journalism – this is a story made up entirely of quotes from supposed experts who evidently don’t know what they’re talking about, with “A UK minister” and an unnamed spokesman from the UK Federation of Bakers being added to the anonymous source that started the hysteria rolling, the “FSA spokeswoman” quoted by the Mail, who says:

“This proposal would disallow selling by numbers. Retailers would not be allowed to put “Six eggs” on the front of the box. If it was a bag of rolls, it would say “500g” instead of six rolls.”

This statement is utterly false.

Indeed, all you have to do is read the proposed regulation itself (warning: PDF) – which makes precisely no mention of outlawing selling by numbers.

In fact, quite the opposite – Annex VIII makes explicit exceptions for foods “which are sold by number”. (This only slightly amended in the final version, despite the apparent claim in the BBC article that such a get-out had been rejected.)

John Band – formerly something of an expert in the food industry in the real world – has already successfully demolished all claims that selling by numbers will be outlawed. He also helpfully points out that

eggs are already graded by weight – e.g. a ‘large’ egg weighs 63-73g – which requires them to be weighed

.

Of course, the *existing* legislation requiring eggs to be weighed is just one part of a vast array of rules and regulations that cover food packaging – none of which, it would appear, most of the supposed experts quoted in all the media coverage of this non-story know anything about.

Indeed, back in April, Compassion in World Farming was complaining about the very same proposed bit of legislation – because it threatens to *reduce* the amount of information currently required (under rules brought in a decade ago).

And please note, from that September 2000 article, this:

“To date, it has been mandatory to put the following indications on packs of eggs: the name of the trader, the number of the packing centre, quality and weight grading, number of eggs, date of minimum durability and appropriate storage, recommendations, particulars as to refrigeration/preservation in the case of grade B eggs (refrigerated or preserved eggs), packing date for eggs of other grades and for imported eggs”

Where this has been turned by the Mail and the rest of the anti-EU crowd into a story about Brussels bureaucrats’ mad over-regulation, the truth of the matter is *precisely* the opposite – these new rules are instead entirely and explicitly about deregulation, as anyone who read the original document would be able to see in a second.

The aim is not to force food producers to include *more* unnecessary information on their packaging, but to remove the existing requirements to include insane levels of detail about (for example) farming conditions, nutritional information, etc. etc. etc. As the proposal itself states:

“The emphasis is on simplifying the regulatory process, thus reducing the administrative burden and improving the competitiveness of the European food industry”

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why you should never believe anything you read in the British press. All it takes is one hack staff writer on a paper with a political agenda to get something wrong, and soon everyone else is following the story up – not by going back to the supposed source of the outcry, but by phoning various rent-a-quotes and asking them their opinion on something they almost certainly know even less about than the journalist who started the whole thing rolling:

Hack journalist: “Hi, it’s Christopher Leake from the Mail on Sunday. What do you think about the EU’s proposals to ban selling eggs by the dozen?”

Anonymous spokesperson: “Eh? They’re proposing what? That’s ridiculous! [Insert ill-informed rant]”

Hack journalist following up initial bullshit story: “Hi, it’s Laurence Peter from the BBC. I just wanted to get your opinion on this story about the EU banning the selling of eggs by the dozen.”

First MEP to pick up the phone (in this case Glenis Willmott): “Oh, the BBC? Right… Erm… (Shit! I can’t let on that I don’t know what I’m talking about… Erm…) Well… [Insert off-the-cuff vaguely plausible explanation of why legislation that doesn't actually exist might possibly be considered sensible, plus vague assurances that there are normally get-outs for this sort of thing, thus lending even more credence to the story even though there's nothing actually going on.]“

And thus another Euromyth is born. It’s all strangely familiar – once again, EU deregulation is presented as over-regulation thanks to the seemingly wilful ignorance of the anti-EU press, and the poor journalistic standards of the rest of the media. Even though this story is utter bollocks, expect it to be trotted out for years to come. Just like with those straight bananas…

UPDATE: A categorical rejection of this story from the European Parliament itself:

The European Parliament’s rapporteur on the food labelling regulation, Renate Sommer (Germany, EPP group) responded today: “In principle, there will be no changes to selling foods by quantity. Selling eggs by the dozen, for example, will not be banned”.

UPDATE – 1st July: The Food Standards Agency has responded to my request for a clarification of their position, following their anonymous spokesperson’s misleading quote in the Mail.

UPDATE 2: Just came across this, via the Scottish Executive. A handy summary of existing EU egg labelling regulations. Please note:

“Minimum standards of quality and weight grading…

“The regulations apply to hen eggs marketed within the Community. They do not apply to eggs sold direct by producers to the final consumer at the farm gate, in local public markets (with the exception of auction markets), or by door-to-door selling. “

Please note also that there is already a requirement to own “a machine for grading the eggs by weight”.

There. Is that categorical enough for you?

* I very much doubt the story actually originated at the Mail – they don’t have the resources to trawl through reams of EU legislation looking for things that they can turn into stories, because the vast majority of EU legislation is deeply boring and innocuous. I’d imagine that they got the tip-off from some anti-EU campaign group, think tank or party, probably in the form of a press release, and that the Mail also didn’t bother to look at the original text but just leapt straight onto the phones looking for quotes to pad the story out a bit. But I don’t know this for certain and so – unlike the Mail – I’m not going to state it as fact.

Details here. I’ve been named the UK finalist in the internet section for my June 2009 post on the percentage of UK laws that come from the EU (also published on Liberal Conspiracy and BlogActiv).

From the announcement:

“An article on the percentage of our laws originating in the EU got the UK nomination for the internet section. The judging panel found James Clive-Matthews’ EUtopia blog overall very entertaining, but selected this entry for its attempt to clarify how the arguments used to make claims about the influence of EU legislation often take original quotes out of context. EUtopia does not draw any conclusions, but lays out the context for the various claims and counter-claims, as such helping to clarify what is often a contentious issue.”

Which is nice.

I would also like to state for the record that nothing I have written on this blog has ever been published with the hope of securing money. It’s all just for my ego – not for anyone else’s, and certainly never to support any political institution or ideology (except on the very rare occasions that I feel that such support is warranted).

So although I find (UKIP press officer) Gawain’s old description of this as the European sycophancy prize amusing, I’d dispute it. Because any blogger/journalist willing to spew out rubbish that they don’t believe in the hope of sucking up to the powerful is never going to be worth reading anyway – and no amount of prixe money will ever alter that.

On a related note: For a more detailed analysis of the percentage of UK laws that come from the EU, check out this detailed report into the subject (PDF). Fascinating stuff – and also tends to support my own vague conclusions.

Hell, I’m supposedly a leading EU politics blogger, and I’ve barely discussed what’s been going on in the midst of one of the biggest crises I can remember the EU facing as the various member states try and work out what the hell to do about the Greek economic collapse.

I thought it was just me being lazy, but according to The Week in Bloggingportal roundup of Euroblogs, not a single one of the 555+ EU-related blogs that Bloggingportal aggregates could be bothered to discuss last week’s EU summit.

Of course, that’s not entirely true. Good old Fistful (one of the few EU-focussed blogs to have been going longer than this place) has been covering the Greek crisis in depth for ages now, and had another lengthy post on Friday looking at how the Greek situation could impact on the Eurozone. Yet even Fistful found little room to discuss the machinations at the EU Summit, preferring to focus more specifically on the economics.

And herein lies the problem. Now that the Lisbon Treaty has been passed, the major areas of EU-related debate have shifted – as they often do, when there aren’t treaty negotiations going on – to the economy.

The only trouble is that there have been treaty negotiations going on for so long now (pretty much continually since the late 90s, with first the Nice negotiations, then the discussions that led to the EU Constitution, then the run-up to Lisbon, and Lisbon again after the first Irish referendum) that most EU-watchers (especially us amateur ones) have become more used to constitutional issues than economic ones. We’ve all been looking at the big *political* picture, not the economic one. (And – let’s face it – most people who are interested in politics aren’t very good when it comes to economics… How many newspaper columnists outside the Business section would you trust on economic analysis? How many politicians not involved with a Finance ministry, for that matter?)

But the EU is, at its most fundamental, an economic body. Yes, you can dispute precisely how it goes about it (and you may be one of the conspiracy theorists who sees the economic aspects of the EU as being a mere smokescreen for the political project), but at the EU’s heart lie vastly ambitious economic projects, from the Common Market and Common Agricultural and Common Fisheries Policies through the Eurozone, Regional Development Funds, even the attempts to cut mobile phone tarrifs and promote the free movement of people. All of these are economic at heart – and even if you are one of the conspiracy theorists, they are economic as much as they are political.

But understanding continental-scale economics takes levels of knowledge, reading, education and understanding that most political commentators simply don’t have . Hell, the very fact that there’s still no consensus on the benefits of the euro shows that – and most people who comment on the euro, even those who have the economic background to know roughly what they’re talking about – don’t have the knowledge of the individual economies and polities that make up the Eurozone that would really be necessary to provide a proper analysis (though Fistful and the Economist’s Charlemagne have good stabs at coming close on occasion).

And so what we mostly do, us EU political commentators, is we try to discuss what’s going on in the EU in terms that are easier to understand. We try to treat the EU as if it’s a country, and EU politics as if its the politics of any old nation state. We try to create conflict – as over the European Council Presidency appointment – and we try to create factions – be they pro-EU vs anti-EU (if you’re in Britain), neo-liberal vs socialist, Anglo-Saxon vs whatever you happen to identify with that’s not Anglo-Saxon (if you’re outside Britain), or whatever.

Part of the reason for this is a desperate attempt to get people interested in a subject that interests us – because so few people care tuppence for EU affairs. But it’s also because we understand conflict. We can explain conflict. We can understand personal, selfish reasons for particular policy positions. They make sense to us, looking at the EU from the perspective of people only used to national-level politics. We don’t all understand economics or interntaional law, and none of us understands the politics of all the individual member states. And so we focus on those things we do understand, and read those into everything the EU does.

But the EU is not a single, harmonious entity, and cannot be simply explained. It is made up of 27 individual member state governments (who all still have to agree unanimously on all major decisions, despite being made up of political parties of all stripes), plus the European Parliament, plus the commission, plus the numerous other bodies that hang around the fringes.

If “the EU” decides to act, it is never for just *one* reason. It is for *at least* 27 different reasons. Unlike with national politics, where policy decisions can often be explained in just a sentence, every EU decision is vastly complex – with large chunks of the decision-making process having taken place behind closed doors in languages that you don’t understand.

In short, we can never hope to understand the EU. It takes more economic knowledge than most of us have. It takes more knowledge of the politics and economics of the individual member states than anyone had. It takes an understanding of all the insane confusion of EU rules, reglations, laws and treaties that can only be gained with a lifetime’s study of international and EU law. It takes insider knowledge of diplomatic discussions and deals that will probably never be revealed.

All we can do is guess – and our guesses will *always* be based on only a tiny, tiny fraction of the knowledge that is needed to get close to the truth. In fact, I can state with utmost certainty that anyone who tells you that they understand the EU is either lying or deluded. No one understands the EU. It is simply too big, too complex, too secretive, too multidisciplinary, too multilingual, too innovative, too unique for anyone to be able to grasp it in its entirety.

This, of course, makes it fascinating to those of use who like a challenge. But it also makes it utterly daunting. To try to explain the EU is like trying to climb Mount Everest. Without oxygen. Or ropes. Or protective clothing. With both arms tied behind your back. At night. In a blizzard.

Little wonder, then, that sometimes the enthusiasm leaves us. Some will quit for good. Others will keep bashing away at it – perhaps deluding themselves that one day they will get it. I intend to keep bashing away at it – but after seven years of an uphill struggle, for now I need a breather while I scout out a new route. This economic crisis in Greece and its reveberations throughout the continent has shown that there are some major gaps in my knowledge of the EU, and I need to fill these in as best I can before I continue.

Back soon, I hope. But in the meantime just remember that *no one* knows what’s going on. Keep that in mind whenever you read anything about the EU and you should do just fine.

As such, a letter just sent to Private Eye (aimed at that publication’s always entertaining Pedantry Corner):

In Eye 1254, Brussels Sprouts begins with “The new EU Spanish presidency (not to be confused with the EU’s first actual president, Herman Van Rompuy)”. Dull grey Herman is not “actually” the EU’s first president, for such a position does not exist. He is instead the first permanent president of the European Council – assuming you can call a two-and-a-half year posting with a two term limit permanent – a pretty much powerless post whose duties primarily lie in chairing the (roughly) quarterly EU summits between the heads of government of the EU member states.

The President of the European Council is not the only post in the EU to be styled “president” (heard of José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission? Jerzy Buzek, president of the European Parliament? the rotating six-monthly national presidencies that the Brussels Sprouts piece was actually about?). Indeed it’s arguably the least powerful of the four EU presidencies, as he doesn’t get to initiate legislation (like the Commission president), nor vote upon it (like the EP president), nor does he technically have any power to outline policy plans (like the rotating national presidencies).

Hell, Van Rompuy isn’t even the first President of the European Council – the position used to be filled by the head of government of the member state which held the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union (also known as the Council of Ministers, the Consilium, or just the Council – related to but separate from the European Council, and not, of course, to be confused with the Council of Europe), and so the first President of the European Council was another Belgian, Achille Van Acker, from January to June 1958.

I know that the EU’s mind-numbingly boring and complicated (see above), and that “EU president” has become a convenient shorthand in the British press ever since the kerfuffle over Tony Blair possibly getting the post, but it is not “actually” accurate to refer to Van Rompuy in that way.

(Cue even more pedantic people than me to point out that the first European Council meeting took place in 1961, making its first president *yet another* Belgian, Gaston Eyskens. But that’s always the way of these things…)

Two articles from the Washington Post have, over the last few days, finalised a new content idea I’ve been having for a while for this place.

First up came a quick overview of the ongoing dispute between Greece and Macedonia over who “owns” Alexander the Great, and then today up pops an article about yesterday’s elections in Moldova, describing the failure of the Communist Party to win as a victory for “Pro-West parties”.

Of course, it’s all a lot more complicated than that – not just the present-day politics, but also the history, in both cases stretching back centuries. And the press, with precious little interest in “foreign” news at the best of times, rarely manages to give much historical context beyond the superficial. (“Oh yeah, Moldova – that used to be Communist, right? Or is it still Communist? God knows – but it’s probably something to do with the Cold War. That’ll do.”)

But, let’s face it, few of us – even those of us who studied history at university – have a solid enough grasp of Europe’s past to know the basic backstory to *every* ongoing dispute. We can always make guesses – neighbours are always likely to come into conflict, after all – but the specifics are often lost. Hell, there’s a good chance that – thanks to the usually national-focus of most history teaching in schools and universities – that large chunks of European history are entirely unknown by many readers, be it the Early Modern big beasts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Spanish Netherlands, or the lost realms of Europe, the Venices, Savoys, Anjous, Brandenburgs, Wallachias, Achaeas, Trebizonds and the rest.

With all the politicians off on holiday for the next few weeks – and being, as I am, bored rigid with all the petty political squabbles – this looks like a good time to start adding to this site’s long-neglected “Culture” and “History” sections with a few (hopefully) handy introductory articles providing a slightly more coherent and considered bit of context to current events than you’ll find on Wikipedia. Plus, just for fun, the odd look at more obscure and forgotten bits of Europe’s history and culture, like my piece on wannabe European states from a while back. A good excuse to expand my knowledge and justify sitting back with a few books – expanding my knowledge was the whole point of starting to blog, after all.

Sound good to you? Or should I stick to politics?

I’ve been a bit quiet over the last few weeks, largely thanks to the real world getting in the way.

One of the major projects I’ve been working on, however, is now in a pre-launch beta phase, and so can be officially revealed: Ideas on Europe – a new group blog that I’ve been developing in partnership with UACES, the University Association for Contemporary University Studies.

Describing itself as a place for “informed analysis, comment, dialogue and debate on all things European”, Ideas on Europe is intended as a non-partisan, multi-national, not exclusively political portal for academics working in the field of European Studies – taking in politics, economics, history, sociology, public policy, culture, geography and more – to engage with those of us outside the ivory towers as well as those within.

At the moment we’ve got nearly 40 contributors on board – a number that’s set to rise considerably – ranging from postgrad students to named chairs at high-profile universities. Some of them have begun to make their first forays into blogging, with posts from Jaani Kaerne (from the University of Tartu in Estonia), EUoplocephalus (from the University of Surrey in the UK), and (in German) Vanessa Buth – as well as a few from me – leading the way.

Among even this initial contributor base, there is a broad range of expertise and experience – with blogs dedicated to subjects like welfare, migration, security, energy, north Africa, and education, as well as more generalist contributors. Now that the site is going public, we should start to see a bit more activity from these early adopters.

Many of the areas we aim to end up covering are currently sorely under-represented in the world of Euroblogging – not to mention the relative lack of academic contributors to the various online debates, most of which are currently dominated by a combination of enthusiastic amateurs and professional political types – so I very much hope that those of us who’ve been active in this section of the internet give the site and its contributors our support, encouragement and advice as it starts to get off the ground over the next few months. Not least because the vast majority of our contributors have never blogged before – nor, indeed, taken part in online discussions.

I’ve already answered some questions about Ideas on Europe’s aims and intentions over at Kosmopolito (which now has its own presence on the new site) and also at Blogactiv, but naturally enough, I’m happy to answer any more that anyone may have here.

Over at his Economist blog, Charlemagne asks “Why it is anti-EU to suggest that the European Parliament does not work very well?”

Herein lies one of the most fundamental problems of the EU debate – something to which I seem repeatedly to return.

The EU is an incredibly complex socio-economic political experiment – a type of regulatory/governmental body unlike anything that has ever been tried before. It is made up of myriad institutions and semi-official bodies, many of which have vast areas of overlap both with each other and with national governments. Good chunks of the EU machinery work only through sharing staff with the agencies, civil services and governments of the member states (the Council being made up of ministers from the member states, the Commission relying on the law-drafting powers of civil servants from the member states, and so on).

At the same time, the EU works across a vast array of policy and regulatory areas – agriculture, fisheries, monetary policy (in some member states, at least), migration and immigration, trade, security and justice, competition and business, aspects of education, sporting and cultural events, and on and on and on.

And yet, whenever the merits of the EU are discussed – especially in the mainstream media – it is presented in simple, confrontational black and white terms. You are either for the EU, or you are against. A eurosceptic or a europhile. Pro-EU or anti-EU.

Like Charlemagne, I’ve been accused of being both a eurosceptic and a europhile in my time – I describe myself as loosely pro-EU, so to some of those in the anti- camp, that makes me a europhile; yet I frequently criticise the EU, so to some of those in the pro- camp I am a eurosceptic.

Yet both europhiles and eurosceptics (and especially their most fervent elements, the withdrawalists and the superstatists) represent the extremes of opinion on the EU. It’s like presenting a jury in a trial with only two alternatives – either let the accused off Scott free or execute them, with no option for fines, community service, rehab or prison sentences. (To make matters worse, although there is a sizable minority of eurosceptics who are actively anti-EU and advocate either withdrawal or its abolition, I have come across very few uncritical europhiles – an imbalance that distorts the debate yet further.)

The presentation of the arguments about the EU in such a manner is not just misleading – it is also dishonest. The choice is not between a federal European superstate and complete withdrawal – yet it suits the extremes on both sides to play up this false binary choice. The europhiles warn of the dire consequences of international isolation should we not back further integration, while the euroscptics warn of a loss of sovereignty and national identity should we continue to allow the EU to expand its influence.

Neither option has to be the case – nor is either option likely in an organisation made up of 27 member states where vetoes and unanimity ensure that almost all decisions are watered-down compromises. Yet these extremes are pretty much all we are ever told about – the dire danger of passing the Constitution / Lisbon Treaty is to move ever closer to the superstate; the dire danger of not passing it is the breakup of the EU itself and a descent into the bad old days of national rivalries and protectionist squabbles. This is nonsense.

Yet in the public debates about the EU there seems to be no room for any shades of grey – indeed, in my experience of doing media punditry about the EU, extreme views are positively encouraged to “liven up” a subject usually (and correctly) considered rather dull.

The idea of a political system that works pretty much entirely via compromise and cooperation, as the EU does, seems anathema to a press that’s always keen to play up political differences and conflict. When faced with a political organisation that, on the surface, seems more or less monolithic (“the EU” being shorthand for the European Parliament, Council, Commission, Court of Justics, or any of its other institutions and agencies depending on the context – sometimes even individual Commissioners and MEPs, and occasionally even institutions that have nothing to do with the EU), the press – and in turn the extreme pro- and anti-EU groups who find such a situation to their advantage – has created a conflict between two artificial extremes in order to force the debate to conform to anachronistic preconceptions about how political discourse is conducted that are entirely inappropriate when approaching something as innovative and unique as the EU.

I remain convinced – and the continued falling turnout at EU elections tends to support this – that the vast majority of people neither really know nor care about the EU enough to form an opinion one way or the other, and that this artificial binary choice between pro- and anti- is serving only to put more people off. But at the same time, anyone who starts looking into the EU with an open mind – as I like to think I have tried to do – will end up (if they are not tricked by the vast amounts of disinformation that seems to swamp all EU debate into believing things that are simply not true) somewhere in the grey middle ground, neither supporting it entirely, nor wishing for it to be done away with. One of the reasons for the continuing decline in turnout at EU elections, I’d suggest, is precisely because voters feel they have to decide whether they are pro- or anti-EU, yet mostly feel neither.

These people, wavering halfway between supporting the EU and thinking it’s a bit rubbish in places, seem to lack a convenient moniker. They are neither europhiles nor eurosceptics. But there is a perfect term for them – they are the majority.

Jon Stewart’s take on the European Parliament is, it must be said, pretty much spot on…

I’m on Twitter at the moment, blathering away more or less incoherently with a bunch of other Eurobloggers (@JonWorth, @JulienFrisch, @kosmopolit, @citizeneurope, @EuropeanCitizen and a bunch of others) as the results and rumours come in.

Follow along via the hashtags #eu09 and #ep09 – your best bet is probably to use Twitterfall to follow the various tweets live. It’s fairly simple to use, it must be said – just add a bunch of searches into the “Custom” field in the left-hand column (I’m using #ep09, #eu09, EU, Europe and elections), and get real-time commentary from all over the shop. Some of it’s rubbish, naturally – this is the internet – but some is surprisingly good.

Current trend – at 8:45pm UK time, so 15 minutes from the results – seems to be a surge in support for the right (both centre right and far right), with mostly falling turnouts yet again, though ranging member state to member state from c.20% to c.80%. But with national issues likely to dominate everywhere, working out Europe-wide reasons for any apparent trends is something to be treated with great caution.

Below the fold – my Twitter contributions from the night (in chronological order, starting c.8:45pm UK time, ending c.2:30am UK time – and for Twitter newcomers, “RT” indicates where I’m quoting someone else):
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I’ve been asked to give this a plug – the deadline’s 31st May, the age limit is 17-35, and the prize (of which there is one for every EU member state) is a trip to Berlin in August/September (just in time for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall). Over to the PR guy:

Applicants can write an article with their views on EU Enlargement and submit it on our website – it does not have to be long, it can be much less than the maximum 2,000 words. It can also be about Europhobia, we don’t mind! I am hoping that some of your members/writers might be able to share their views! Would it be possible to contact some of your writers or friends to let them know about the event? All national winners will be given an all expenses paid trip to Berlin where they can partake in an exciting conference with EU officials and the other international winners.

I’m not sure that there has ever been such a thing as an “exciting” conference with EU officials, but still. Berlin’s meant to be fun (I’ve still never been – perhaps I should enter…), so why not, eh?

For those coming in late, the superstate series so far:
- The danger of Jean Monnet
- Why EU superstate conspiracy theories are nonsense
- Four points and a question for eurosceptics who believe in the advancing EU superstate
- EU competence creep, the spectre of the superstate, and how governments actually work

As I’ve set out several times, I don’t see an EU superstate as a realistic possibility at any point in the next hundred years – not even the next three hundred years. For me, this isn’t a problem. Our grandchilren’s grandchildren’s grandchildren are unlikely to have any of the same concerns that we do today – and as the Anglo-Scottish union of 1707 has proven nicely, national/cultural identities are more than capable of surviving political union (hell, in Scotland’s case the national identity has arguably got even stronger since the Acts of Union). As such, if – over the course of the next few centuries – it proves to be in the best economic interest of the peoples of Europe for a “superstate” of some description to emerge from the present EU, so what? We’ll all be long dead.

But if such a superstate were to emerge, what would it look like? On one of those previous superstate posts (all of which have got healthy discussions in the comments – despite various sidetracks into insane detail about trucking and jam), helpful contributor French Derek argues that

“a federal state of 27 nations, each with their own languages, cultures, economic models, etc would be impossible to govern”

However, there are two cases where something similar to this has come about – Russia and India. Could these provide us with a vision of a future European superstate and clues about a model to follow?

Where the EU is made up of 27 member states with 23 official languages (and a bunch of other, less widely-used ones ranging from Cornish in the UK and Frisian in Denmark/Germany through more widely-used unofficial languages like Russian, Ukrainian and Romani), the Russian Federation is made up of 21 semi-autonomous republics (plus various self-governing cities, oblasts, okrugs, etc. making up a total of 83 federal subjects) and has 27 official languages), while India is made up of 28 states (and a few additional semi-autonomous regions) with 29 languages spoken by more than a million people (and 122 spoken by more than 100,000). Neither country – much like the EU – could be considered to be ethnically or religiously homogenous.

But the fact remains that both federal states continue to function, despite insanely complex internal demographics (far more so than the United States of America – the federal model most often used as a point of comparison with any future EU superstate). Naturally, the size of their populations are not entirely comparable – Russia’s population is c.145 million (about a third of the EU’s 500 million) and India’s c.1.17 billion (about twice the EU’s population), while the US’ population of c.300 million is about two thirds that of the EU. But still – India’s size is similar at 1.3 million square miles as opposed to the EU’s 1.6 million (compared the the USA’s 3.6 million and Russia’s 6.7 million) – so who’s to say that either population or geographical area is a factor in the functioning of an effective federal state?

Of course, in the case of both Russia and India (as well as, arguably, that of the US), their current situation came about after centuries of war and conquest – unlike the EU’s entirely peaceful formation – and whether either Russia or India can be considered to be effectively governed is another matter entirely. But Russia, India and the US nonetheless are all examples of large federal states that manage to work – in India and the US with more or less effective democracies that have both seen minorities elected to the highest office in the land (Obama in the US, obviously, but also Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a Sikh). In both India and Russia (and arguably some parts of the US as well, with the various secessionist movements), the various federal states and regions have often retained a strong sense of identity and autonomy – just as have Scotland and Wales (among others) in the much smaller federal state that is the United Kingdom. Both India and Russia also retain some violent paramilitary nationalist/minority elements that occasionally cause trouble (much like in the federal state of Spain with ETA, or the UK with the various Irish republican groups of the last few decades).

So large federal states with complex demographics can exist and function with the constituent parts retaining their own national/cultural identites.

But can they hold together? India was far larger than it now is when under British rule – once the Raj left 60 years ago, Partition tore the country in three in a bloody horror the tensions of which remain to this day. With the end of the Cold War and fall of the Communist Party, various parts of the old USSR (Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, etc. etc.) broke away from Russia – and other regions, most notably Chechnya, have continued as part of the federation only under threat of force. The United States was torn apart by civil war less than a century after its formation.

Indeed, it’s arguable that Russia and India continue to hold together largely due to fear of “the other” – the perceived threat of the West in Russia (hence the rampant popularity of the nationalistic Putin and co), and the genuine threat of Pakistan in India (the threat of India in turn acting as a unifying device for the fragile federation of Pakistan). The United States originally came together thanks to the threat of Britain, while England emerged from the Heptarchy under the threat of the Vikings, France from the threat of England, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, modern federal Germany from a series of unifying wars with various neighbours under Bismark – and so on and so on.

In all cases, the sense of identity – “I am Russian”, “I am Indian”, “I am American”, “I am English”, “I am French”, “I am German” and all the rest – emerged due to a growing sense that another group of people were both somehow different and a threat. (Welsh national identity is a prime case in point – such a thing didn’t even exist until England started to invade what is now Wales, with the entire region made up of little more than warring tribes and principalities until they were given a unifying force, and existed as one kingdom only once – and then for just seven years – until the English conquest was completed and Wales in its current form was created. The same unifying, nationalising effect can also be seen in Scotland, where medieval English invasions likewise fostered a sense of Scottish national identity that helped bring the warring clans together.)

But what is the European Union’s threat? Who is “the other” for the EU that can foster a sense of European identity? With the current ongoing arguments over Turkish EU entry – not to mention the rise in tensions between Islam and the West of the last decade, the Islamist terror attacks in Madrid and London, and the perennial Europe-wide tensions over immigration – is “the other” for the EU going to be Islam? With the increasingly frequent stand-offs between the EU and Moscow over energy supplies and the autonomy of states on the European fringe, could it be Russia? For a while under the Bush administration and in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, it even looked like it might be America.

But whatever the “threat” – real or simply perceived – might turn out to be, it is hard to see a truly European identity begin to emerge without a greater sense of what being European is *not*. “We are American because we are not British”, “We are English because we are not Viking”, “We are Welsh/Scottish because we are not English” – this is how national identity has always begun.

So, while I disagree that the EU is too big and complex to form a superstate, I do maintain that such a thing remains unlikely. You can legislate to create political and economic integration, you can forge agreements between different territories and different cultures – but you cannot legislate or negotiate to build a sense of identity. Without that sense of identity – “I am American”, “I am Indian”, “I am Russian” – none of those three existing sprawling federations would be able to hold together. Of the EU’s 500 million citizens, how many really feel “European” to the extent that an American feels American, a Russian Russian or an Indian Indian? Hell – we can’t even agree on what Europe is – how can we know what it is to be European?