DUTCH PM COURTS BLAIR WHILE ALL EUROPE SCREAMS "FOUL"

A day before the beginning of the EU Summit (Friday, Saturday in Brussels) the Dutch PM Jan-Peter Balkenende and his deputy Gerrit Zalm are THE ONLY support for Tony Blair's widely booed final proposal for solution of the EU budget-crysis. The situation is extremely serious. Not that the army of bureaucrats in Brussels and the rest of the huge administration of the EU will not receive their fat salaries. No: those outlays are safe, of course. The tug-of-war over the EU budget for the next five or so years may mean cancellation of the (already announced and fixed) admission of Bulgaria and Rumania on January 1st 2007 but will transform the accession talks with candidate-members Turkey and Croatia into a total waste of time and money and will, eventually make a joke of even discussing the Commission's proposal to grant Macedonia the same candidate-member status.

Why so?

Because as European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso summed it up "It is not credible, let's be honest, to speak about further enlargement of the EU if we are not able at 25 to decide about the future financing of the Union". He said it would be impossible to accommodate Bulgaria and Romania, which are due to join the EU in 2007 or 2008 (oh la-la!), under the British proposal.

That means a hell of lot of trouble around the Balkans.

The arguments behind this forecast are numerous.

1. Whether presiding or not, Tony Blair and the UK with their position about the budget remain in the EU well after this summit is over.
2. Manuel Barroso, this is obvious, was not qualified to lead marginal Portugal and obviously is a far cry from a profile to fit the chair of Jacques Delors. He is a provincial heavyweight.
3. The EU has allowed the emergence of Ahmadinejad et comp. in the Middle East with now direct agenda to annihilate the State of Israel, the single most serious acute problem for the world
4. Fiddling about cash subsidies with so many open, outright dangerous fires around the globe saps the will to address the larger issues.
5. Repositioning the EU Constitution as a priority is the only chance to put the European act together and set the mechanisms which will help the US and the EU guide or push the UN into establishing norms and priorities for the future of this civilization;