Half-Baked Europe

TCS Daily

"Half-Baked Europe
By Gareth Harding

The European Union will mark its 50th anniversary next year, but if the current malaise continues its celebration is more likely to resemble a wake than a birthday party.

The 25-member bloc has been in a funk since French and Dutch voters rejected a proposed EU constitution a year ago. Bad-tempered haggling over the Union's seven-year budget, sluggish economic growth, stubbornly high unemployment and open disagreement over how far and how fast to expand the club to the south and east have also soured the mood in Brussels.

Most European leaders meeting in the self-styled EU capital this week did not attempt to gloss over the crisis now facing the Union. "Europe is too present where it is not seen as useful or too absent where it is most needed," European Parliament President Josep Borell told heads of state. In a damning indictment of half a century of European integration, the Spaniard added: "Europeans can scarcely perceive the advantages of their Union. Europe is viewed less in terms of the advantages it brings, than the problems it creates or the solutions it fails to deliver.""