Creating the superstate: the European Commission is a huge bureaucracy that administers the EU. Some see it as a positive force for the closer economic, political, and social integration of member states; others see it as a tyrannical and wasteful paper-shuffling machine.

Ever since the European Union's foundation, the trend has been towards harmonizing makes and regulations. It makes sense. Why not have a single sizing system for nuts and bolts? Of, an arrest warrant that's the same in all countries? Or, one set of workplace safety standards? But, the drift to one-size-fits-all management is fiercely resisted by many.

Brussels is the city where the European Commission has set up shop. The commission is the administrative centre of the EU. At the top, there are 15 appointed commissioners; Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain appoint two commissioners each, other EU members appoint one each. (After expansion, every member state will appoint one commissioner).

None of the members of the commission is elected and this is supposed to isolate them from politics. The commissioners and the thousands of civil servants that report to them are supposed to not take instructions from their national governments. Their job is to assist the further integration of the community. In theory, the commission works for the good of the whole community; the reality is less noble and high-minded.

The European Commission has developed a poor reputation. Its bureaucrats have been called dictatorial; its leadership accused of corruption and incompetence. Critics spit out the phrase "Brussels ordered it" when explaining why, for example, an Indian restaurant can no longer serve Bombay Duck. The same venomous "Brussels ordered it" can be heard as the landlord of a British pub tells a customer he can longer get his favourite beer by the pint; "It's all metric now, mate."

The commission has been caught in favouritism in hiring, waste and mismanagement in operations, and good, old-fashioned fraud. Its 16,000 employees have been formed into such a complex and impenetrable bureaucracy that observers question whether anybody can effectively manage it.

In 1999, the organization became so tangled in scandal under its President Jacques Santer that all 15 commissioners had to resign. That mess started a reevaluation of the role of the organization and attempts to trim its powers.

Romano Prodi, an Italian professor and politician, was appointed as the new President of the European Commission. His attempts to clean up the institution have been mixed. He has an unfortunate habit of falling asleep during meetings. He has undermined the efforts of some of his colleagues (Mr. Prodi recently described the rules surrounding the euro as "stupid"), and he has a fondness for secrecy.

And, scandals keep popping up to the headlines; the latest, a fraud at Eurostat, the group that gathers EU statistics. Officials were issuing overpriced contracts to friendly companies. The difference between the real cost and the reported cost then found its way into private bank accounts. Estimates are that at least as much as eight million euros was siphoned off.

Mr. Prodi, denied a report in the Financial/Times claiming that he and other top officials were aware of the problems at Eurostat for years, but failed to take action. Late in 2003, Mr. Prodi told a European Parliament committee that neither he nor any of his fellow commissioners had any idea that fraud was taking place. This, of course, leads to the criticism that they should have known.

Meanwhile, the German magazine Stern reports that the European Anti-Fraud Office is investigating officials in the EU's Publications Office. They suspect irregularities similar to those discovered in Eurostat have been taking place.

Many EU watchers, however, believe that corruption will never be stopped.

Writing in the Dai/r Telegraph (U.K.) in 1999, Antony Jay emphasized the lack of control over European Commission activities.

"The departments of government ate run not by elected ministers hoping for re-election," wrote Mr. Jay, "but by appointed commissioners who never need votes.

"The vast wealth of the EC enables it to buy the cooperation of bureaucrats in member states, by the funds it adds to their budgets and the perks of travel and entertainment. It can buy the acquiescence of the politicians by allocating EC funds to their countries and by 'jobs for the boys.' This is quite apart from bribery and corruption.

"The language difference means that there is no Europe-wide press to publicize scandals, and focus and unify electoral sentiment across the EU.

"The combination of massive taxation revenues and almost non-existent democratic control has of course fuelled an enormous gravy train."

A few years later, Dougal Watt made some blunt attacks on the European Court of Auditors, for whom he used to work. He claims corruption is "permitted to flourish to the benefit of all the institutions' elites" and said that despite his action and that of other "whistleblowers," the EU accountancy system was now "so degraded it cannot police itself."

Mr. Watt was subsequently supported by 205 of his colleagues, 40 percent of the court's staff, in a secret ballot. He then fled to Scotland where he was diagnosed as suffering from an anxiety disorder. Mr. Watt told the Glasgow Herald that he feared for his life after claiming to have exposed Mafia-related corruption at the heart of the European institutions. He was later fired.

Meanwhile, the bureaucracy grinds on. More and more rules are generated aimed at bringing conformity to every action of Europe's nations. Very little escapes the attention of the regulators.

The civil servants have kept themselves busy setting standards for what they call "manipulable materials" for pigs. That means straw, hay, sawdust and the like for porkers to root about in. This is actually not quite as nutty as it sounds but it does give an insight into the kind of detail with which the commission concerns itself.

This same bureaucratic machine has created a vast body of regulations that a]l members of the EU must follow. Some of them might seem a bit silly, but mostly they are designed to protect consumers and make trade and commerce move more smoothly. The standardization of rules is a]so aimed at smoothing the way to the eventual political union of Europe.

In some ways, the EU is well along that path already. In most EU countries more than half of new laves are drafted ha Brussels. According to an informal survey by The Economist: "The Austrians think that 60-70 percent of their domestic legislation is now framed ha Brussels. A study by France's Conseil d'Etat in the early 1990s estimated that 55 percent of new French laws were being drafted ha Brussels ... Lord Inglewood, a British member of the European Parliament's constitutional affairs committee, puts the figure for Britain at about 50 percent."

While the creation of a single market and currency have kept bureaucrats busy for the last few years, that work is now largely done. So, the European Commission is turning its attention to bringing harmony to legislation covering the environment, consumer protection, public health, and internal security.

The European Commission has even begun to tackle criminal law. The terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001 prompted the creation of a European arrest warrant. Again there is resistance, mostly from the British. Opponents in the U.K. have been raising the possibility that further harmonization of criminal law will lead to abolition of trial by jury and other long-held traditions of British law.

The United Kingdom is a reluctant European Union member in many other spheres; a large segment of its population will resist the trend towards political union. But, other member states are likely to have a hard time giving up their political traditions as well.

Within the EU there are governments that occupy most spots on the political spectrum from left to right. Austria is governed by a party of the far right, while Britain's Labour Party is centrist, and Germany's coalition is left of centre.

Harmonizing entirely different political cultures into one voice may be impossible. The example of the U.S.-led war in Iraq in 2003 makes this case. While the British, Spanish, and Italian governments gave strong support to the United States, the French and German governments led an equally strong opposition. It's tough to see how such completely opposed views can exist within the same political structure.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES:

1. In a letter to the Editor of The Times in January 2003, R. F. Atkins wrote that British Prime Minister "Tony Blair is now willing to admit a desire to create a European superpower which, in his words, 'will contain over 500 million people, a political and economic entity bigger than the U.S. and Japan put together.' The real question is not whether, or how, but rather why create a superpower like the United States of Europe? For what purposes would its creation be essential--so essential that the British people must, if necessary, be dragooned into the union without their explicit consent? Would a USE superpower confront and contend with the USA, or would they jointly dominate the world in perfect harmony? Is either desirable? What response is expected from nations outside of the two superpowers? If creation of such massive blocs is an evident good for their peoples, would Mr. Blair and the European political class support with enthusiasm the creation of a United States of Asia? Of a United States of Islam? Would a world so divided be a safer, happier, more prosperous place? Or would the blocs collide, as nations do now, but with more terrible results?" Discuss.

2. However smoothly its spokesmen would deny it in public while admitting it in private, the EU is a threat to the national sovereignty of its member states. Sovereignty sounds like an abstraction, but in fact it refers to the ultimate ability of a nation to control its own destiny rather than being dictated to by others. For example, EU laws override the laws made by the parliaments of the member states. This means that the entire body of English common law, for example, a treasury of liberty, which has grown up over nearly a thousand years, is now disposable. The British parliament cannot legislate for its own people without the permission of bureaucrats in Brussels. On the other hand, perceived insults to national sovereignty have been the cause of millions of deaths in European wars for centuries. Through discussion, try to decide whether loss of sovereignty in exchange for peace is a good or bad bargain.

Websites

European Bureau for Less Used Languages--http:// www.eblul.org:8080/eblul European Commission-http://europa.eu.int/comm/ index_en.htm

European Union Follies and Myths--http://www.kc3.co. uk/~dt/ Eurosceptics--http://www. eurosceptic.com/

Friends of Europe--http:// www.friendsofeurope.org/

EUROMYTHOLOGY

Newspapers in Europe often carry stories about some loopy directive or other coming out of Brussels. Almost all of these yarns are false.

In recent years, there have been mainstream media reports that the European Commission has ordered that:

* Curved bananas and cucumbers be banned;

* Christmas trees must be symmetrical in shape, with regularly spaced needles, identical roots, and be the same colour;

* Fishers wear hairnets aboard their fishing boats;

* Traditional pizzas be outlawed under new laws regulating their diameter and depth; and,

* Gin bottles must be round rather than square.

None of these reports is true; all are the product of a busy little industry that works to undermine the EU in order to promote opposition to it.

Improbable though such stories are, they are widely believed to be accurate. People who don't like taking orders from Brussels want such nonsense to be true because it validates their opposition to EU membership.

NONCONFORMISTS

While the European Commission brings conformity to many aspects of daily life within the EU, language remains an exception. As borders fade, ethnic pride grows. There is an upsurge in the teaching of the nearly extinct Breton language in France, Gaelic has returned to the schools of Scotland, Dutch radio stations broadcast in Frisian and Limburg, and road signs appear in Welsh and English in Wales.

The people of Brittany in northwestern France have always been an independent lot. Their bloodlines are Celtic, making them cousins of the Irish, Scots, and Welsh. For decades their culture has been in a decline, at times, even, its expression has been illegal. Now, children in Brittany are going to bilingual schools that teach in French and Breton. This trend is seen elsewhere in Europe. People in northern Italy can now take courses in the Friulian language, and in parts of Finland the news is broadcast in Saami.

People seem to revel in their cultural roots as a blanket of sameness has settled over consumer trends and styles. According to the New York Times, "Some students of the trend believe the identity of Europe's ethnic groups is strengthening because anchors like religion and nationality have weakened."

THE GRAVY TRAIN

Canadians were shocked in 2003 to learn about the spending habits of Canada's Privacy Commissioner, George Radwanski. Among other extravagances, Mr. Radwanski billed taxpayers $444 for a restaurant meal. But, such lavish feeding is nothing new to Europeans; they have been complaining about bureaucrats and politicians living the good life on public funds for years.

Brussels, where many of these public servants are stationed, is famous far its very expensive restaurants. They exist because so many of their customers make the most of their generous expense accounts.

In 1999, the British Independent Television channel set up a hidden camera at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. It recorded Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) arriving on a Friday morning and signing the attendance register so they could claim their daily living expense allowance of 2.50 [euro] (roughly $380). Many politicians then left the building, heading straight to the airport for their flights home, on expenses. The plane tickets, it turns out, are another much source of income.

The MEPs receive an allowance to take first-class flights home every week. However, many MEPs use discount airlines and pocket the difference amounting to tens of thousands of dollars a year. Dutch MEP, Michiel van Hulten has refused the high-priced fares. In 2003, he said, "Since the election I've paid back 15,000 [pounds sterling] (about $36,000) in excess travel money; that's just one MEP, in three years."

European voters, most of whom can't afford to fly first class or the price of a gourmet restaurant meal, call these perks the "gravy train." The abuse of such entitlements bring the entire political and governmental process into disrepute.

FACT FILE

Little groups of resisters in Britain calling themselves "metric martyrs," tried to defy the order to use litres and kilos but were hit with hefty fines.

FACT FILE

A huge swindle involving tobacco sales to known Italian Mafia figures was uncovered in the early 1990s; a senior European Commission official, Antonio Quatraro took the fall for the scandal, literally, when he jumped to his death from a Brussels office window in April 1993.