The president of the European Commission is a little late for dinner. He enters the restaurant alone, unattended by aides or burly secret servicemen with plastic coils going into their ears. Neither the waiters nor most of the other diners seem to recognize the president. We sit at a high, circular table in this informal Brussels bistro, and have a freewheeling, intellectual conversation. The president apologizes for leaving his mobile phone on, in case an important call comes through. Late in the evening, our conversation is startlingly interrupted by the Ode to Joy melody from Beethoven's Ninth, the official European anthem. This -- I realize after a moment -- is the ringing tone of president Prodi's mobile. But no, it's not president Bush on the line. It's someone from Italy.
There are two ways of reading this little scene, unimaginable in the life of a president of the US. Those who hope to see a European superpower will sigh that it shows how far we still have to go. Some personal criticism of the relaxed leadership style of Professor Romano Prodi, the president of the European Commission -- president Prodi, as his office insists on calling him -- may be mixed with much more fundamental reflections about the need for reform of EU institutions to ensure that a bloc of 375 million people, with a combined GDP larger than the US' can "speak with one voice" and "punch its proper weight" in the counsels of the world. Alternatively, you can -- as I do -- find it not just molto simpatico but also a charming illustration of how very different the EU is from any conventional notion of great power, world power or superpower, as currently embodied by the US.
The trouble is, the EU itself is not happy with the great thing that it already is. So it sometimes claims or aspires to be something it can not be. That is a definition of unhappiness. The EU is like the mermaid who wanted to be a girl, in Hans Andersen's fairy tale. Her feet always hurt when she walks, because really they should be a tail in the water. And it irritates others, too. When I ask the former foreign minister of a major power in Asia about his dealings in Brussels, he says he is annoyed by Europe having the pretensions of grandeur without the substance.
To be sure, the EU is already a world power when it comes to trade and aid. If the eurozone is consolidated and grows (including Britain), the euro will be a world currency to rival the dollar. In Javier Solana, the EU has a "Mr Foreign Policy" and when his mobile phone rings during our lunchtime conversation, the caller is Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General. But Solana himself insists that for the foreseeable future there cannot be a single European foreign policy, only a "common" one, closely coordinated between the governments of member states. The answer to Henry Kissinger's (apocryphal?) question "You say Europe -- but which number should I call?" will continue to be several numbers, in Berlin, London and Paris, as well as Brussels, and probably two or three others as well (the subsidiary numbers varying according to the issue.
As for this planned European Rapid Reaction Force: yes, there is a significant question as to whether its military planning will take place under Nato auspices. It's significant both in symbolic terms and because planning will just be much more effective (and cheaper) done with Nato. But either way, the idea that the EU is building up a "European army" which will in any sense be a military counterpart to its economic strength is simply for the birds.
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