The key insight to understanding the European Union is to realize that the EU isn't a union of Europeans, but of European governments. A very popular and somewhat dry topic to discuss these days is European identity; appropriately for the continent that produced the existentialists, apparently a large number of European elites wake up every morning and say "Who the hell am I anyway?" Lileks' encounter with the Spaniard who says she's European (but would probably call herself Castillian or Catalan or Valencian in Spain) is typical of the confusion that the postmodern state produces.

Because the EU is composed of governments first and people second, EU policies often promote rather odd but usually slightly crooked results. Take, for instance, this Wall Street Journal article from November 16, which discusses how the ten new members of the EU (who joined on May 1 of this year) "doubled their government aid to struggling industries in the years before joining the bloc." This presumably falls against EU rules promoting "competitiveness" within the Union, but checking it out is going to be a bear.

That investigation is going to be carried out through the EU's European Commission, the real executive and day-to-day power within the Union. The EU does have an elected European Parliament, but even after MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) managed to force the incoming European Commission to reshuffle itself (comparable to Congress forcing a Cabinet reshuffle, but unprecedented in EU history), the Parliament remains cloutless, as the Wall Street Journal reported on 18 November. Most grievously, Parliament can only force the entire Commission to resign--it can't impeach and remove individual commissioners. That's a major block to the use of one of its powers. Parliament does have control over the EU's budget, but at only 110bn euros (about $140 to $145 bn, depending), that's not really a major threat.

Therefore, the European Commission will continue running the show, more or less. The Commission is a twenty-five member body, including the President, with representatives nominated by the government of each member state. The European Parliament had rejected the earlier lineup of commissioners for the coming five-year term largely because of the nomination by Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi of Rocco Buttiglione, a staunch Catholic who viewed homosexuality as a sin, to the justice and security portfolio. (Berlusconi has a history of choosing interesting allies: According to New York Times, his new foreign minister once called Mussolini "the greatest statesman of the century.") Buttiglione wasn't the only commissioner-designate who faced criticism, but he was the symbol of the Commission slate's troubles.

Buttiglione's name was withdrawn, Parliament assented to the new slate, and the Commission took office. And just in time, because it looks like time for the postmodern state to adapt to the challenges of the contemporary world. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, secretary-general of NATO, told the New York Times in an interview that Europeans would have to move closer to the American view of the seriousness of the threat from terrorism. Among his concerns:

The experience of Iraq had taught him two lessons as a European and an Atlanticist, he said.

"The first is that if Europe sees its integration process as one directed against the United States, it will not work because the result will be a split in Europe, and that is an ambition that no European should have,'' he said.

"The second is that if you want to have a trans-Atlantic dialogue between grownups, I know that any president and any American administration is willing to listen to the European voice as long as it is one European voice. If it is five different voices, they will not take the trouble to listen and they will wonder what is Europe."

After more than thirty years of building the postmodern state, in other words, Henry Kissinger is still waiting for someone from "Europe" to call him back.