The convention on the European Union's future is taking place in Brussels. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to move the meetings a few miles down the road to Waterloo. For the proposals fired off by the European Commission on May 22nd read like a last death-or-glory assault by the federalist Old Guard on the remaining powers of Europe's nation-states. The commission, which has always seen itself as the true guardian of the European flame, proposes in essence to abolish the right of individual EU countries to run their own foreign policies. Unveiling his ideas before the European Parliament, Romano Prodi, the commission's head, Napoleonically demanded that the EU should "speak with one voice on all aspects of external relations." The model he has in mind for foreign and security policy is the existing one for trade, on which the EU already speaks and negotiates as a team. Just as there is no longer a British or a French trade policy, just an EU position, so Mr Prodi envisages the end of independent foreign policies. In his paper he proposes a formal mechanism for forging a single European foreign policy. A single "high representative" for foreign policy would be based in the European Commission. He would propose foreign-policy initiatives, which EU countries would endorse by majority vote.
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