COMMENT For those who believe in a united Europe, this has not been a great week. It started with elections to the European parliament in which voter turnout hit a record low, after a campaign dominated by national issues in almost all the European Union’s 27 countries.
It continued with an EU finance ministers’ meeting, at which the UK fought off an attempt to confer new powers on EU financial supervisors. It ended with a wrestling match over whether EU leaders, at a summit next Thursday and Friday in Brussels, should make a legally binding decision to propose José Manuel Barroso for a second term as European Commission president, or just declare their political support for him. All very disappointing, no doubt. But there is another way of looking at things.
