Fifty Years On

The EU is marking its fiftieth anniversary and the BBC has a retrospective on the Treaty of Rome that started it all that had this interesting bit of history:

The treaty - still being argued over and translated into four languages until the last minute - was not printed. The six (signatory nations) went ahead with the ceremony anyway. The print shop sent six copies of the title page, and the last, or signature page, but in between these two the entire text of the treaty was missing.

The six heads of government put their signatures to a blank document.

That is indeed the EU in a nutshell; "Just sign this nice blank document," say the Eurocrats. "And we'll fill it in for you."

What could go wrong with that arrangement? Thank Heaven not everyone is looking forward to the next half century.