Stephen Pollard files yet another report from Brussels:
Talking to senior Commission officials, MEPs and other such people, it's clearer than ever that the Franco-German drive to frustrate Bush reflects their own frustration at seeing their EU leadership role slipping away rather than anything more elevated (and similarly lies behind Giscard's draft last week from the constitutional convention).
The corporatist EU agenda of France and Germany, and their knee-jerk anti-Americanism, is stranded in the 20th century. The 21st century agenda is for a lithe, market-driven, EU, pushed for by the new entrants - most of which look to the US not as an empire to be taken on but as their liberator.