You can tell people in Brussels are getting desperate when they wheel out the old bicycle metaphor. Franco Frattini, the European Union's justice commissioner, took a spin down cliché lane recently as he vainly pleaded with interior ministers to accept more decision-making in Brussels: "Europe is like a bicycle - either it goes ahead or it falls to the ground."

It took Tonio Borg, the justice minister from Malta, one of the EU's newest members, to deflate this oldest of Brussels saws: "When my bicycle stops moving I put my feet on the ground and have a rest," he said.