I retrieved on my Palm these few remarks I had put in a memo while I was in the US, in December. I had found in the current issue of Foreign Policy some advertisement for the European Union I had found rather clumsy and inaccurate. Here are my few thoughts.

The EU treats itself with some advertisement in Foreign Policy. A luxury brochure gives the reader the best facts, the ones susceptible to make Europe glooming, booming, and moving in the right and bright direction. Have a doubt? The Frenchies and a gang of Dutch people sent the EU to hell two years ago ? Would they say the very same no again, should they be asked one more time their opinion (don’t worry French already know they will not be asked again)? Only a handful of Spanish accepted the constitutional treaty their neighbors rejected, the rest of the crowd staying home, not giving a damn apparently? The luxury brochure dismisses such petty issues. Just a bit of fatigue due to the enlargements of the Union. It is over now; just a bad memory guys. Just an “unfamiliar treaty”. No more than that. Now everything is bright and shines like the glossy paper on which those reassuring news are printed. The luxury brochure has a killing fact to prove it. The EU citizens’ satisfaction as measured by polls is at its highest in decades: 53% of European Citizens do think that the EU is a good thing for their country. A killing figure, isn’t it?

Well, I thought, if in my semester evaluations I had a ratio of 53% of my students being satisfied with my class, I would not publish it in Foreign Policy.