But no one is
inclined to take such ad-hoc alliances among the candidate countries
seriously. The disparity between their farm sectors is such that it
rules out a single voice.
Moreover, the EU is strained to the limit of its habitual
consensus-driven decision making. The breakdown of the European
mechanism of deliberation was brought into sharp relief by the way in
which the future of the CAP was decided in a series of chats between
the leaders of France and Germany in a hotel in Brussels. Their deal
was later rubber stamped, unaltered, in a summit of all EU members last
month.
The Union is in constitutional and institutional flux. Small and even
medium sized members - such as the United Kingdom - are marginalized.
As the EU grows to 25 countries, a core of leadership will emerge. It
will involve Germany, France and, potentially the UK and Italy.
These will hand down blueprints to be fleshed out by the less
significant states and by an increasingly sidelined European Commission
and a make-believe European Parliament.
The countries of central and eastern Europe are and will, for a long
time, be second class citizens, tolerated merely because they provide
cheap, youthful, labor, raw materials and close-by markets for finished
goods.
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