Will the EU treaty finally be signed off in mid-October, as planned? The ink was hardly dry on June's text when Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Poland's temperamental prime minister, threatened to reopen the whole deal, insisting there were more issues to settle. Although Poland backed down, new demands have followed, such as a call for a permanent Polish legal adviser at the European court of justice, a privilege currently restricted to Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. By the time EU foreign ministers met in September, other countries had joined in with their demands, raising long-standing, and mostly trivial, gripes. Belgium called for a debate on the rotation of commissioners' jobs, Bulgaria fussed about the design of euro notes and coins.
So is the treaty unravelling? Not really. Disputes over the June text have been real—but no worse than you'd expect when you put 27 lawyers in a room. None is likely to stop the treaty from being signed. But, as ever, it suits some countries to see these legal skirmishes blown up to satisfy domestic audiences. This is particularly true in Poland. One Polish source says the Kaczynski twins (president and prime minister) were in a "difficult PR situation" after the June summit, with opposition parties and newspapers saying they had "lost" the summit. He thinks the twins' demand for a legal adviser—not unreasonable in itself—was cooked up to "show they are still playing hardball" with Brussels.
Poland's elections take place on 21st October, just two days after the EU wants the treaty signed off. The prickly Kaczynski brothers are volatile, but Poland is not the biggest worry in Brussels. Many think the real drama will come after this October summit: will the treaty be sunk by referendums? Of the three countries that may hold polls, the treaty should be safe in Ireland, but is on shakier ground in Denmark and the Netherlands.
Last at the party
Britain's pro-Europeans have belatedly come together to take on the Eurosceptics. The Coalition for the Reform Treaty, which launched in September, is a network of think tanks, Euro-friendly businesses and a smattering of old-school federalists to make the case for the treaty and its ratification in parliament. Unlike previous pro-European groups, it is not government-backed—government support proved fatal for Britain in Europe, the pro-euro campaign group that fizzled out once the government decided against taking Britain into the euro. But can the coalition take on Open Europe, a Eurosceptic pressure group that is the darling of the anti-European press? Organisers say there are lessons to learn from "this canny and clever organisation" and its "slick approach" to the media.
A tale of two commissioners
Meglena Kuneva and Leonard Orban have had very different fortunes since they joined the European commission ten months ago. They became commissioners when their respective countries, Bulgaria and Romania, came into the EU earlier this year. But although there are 27 EU states, there are not 27 serious jobs. Undaunted, commission president José Manuel Barroso sliced off bits from other portfolios. Kuneva, the lucky one, got the brief for consumer affairs, where she has turned out to be a media-savvy player, hoping that being friendly to shoppers is a way to make the EU loved. This year she has taken a bite out of Apple, censuring the Californian company for bundling together its music players with its music-download service. She has also introduced a law to close the loopholes on timeshare cheats and promised to crack down on toxic toys from China.
Poor Orban drew the short straw, becoming the commissioner for multilingualism, a non-job that amounts to little more than being in charge of the commission's translation and interpretation services. But he is trying to keep busy. In April, he gave "his vision of the role of poetry and multilingualism in the EU"; in May he trekked off to Sofia to pay homage to St Cyril, the 9th-century monk who devised the Cyrillic alphabet—"a truly multilingual European"; more recently he has been seen at a conference about "linguistic technologies"—Euro-jargon for phones, dictionaries and DVDs.
Yes, commissioner
Having lots of idle commissioners might suit the mandarins of Brussels. "The fewer items the commissioners have to discuss, the better. That way there is less chance of them messing things up," writes Derk-Jan Eppink, a former Dutch official, whose gossipy book Life of a European Mandarin is doing the rounds in Brussels. Eppink relates how the mandarins contrive to make all their proposals "A-point dossiers," meaning there is full agreement and they do not need to be discussed in the weekly commissioners' meetings. This was how the infamous "Bolkestein directive"—the law on opening up European services to competition—began its life. The draft law that brought tens of thousands protesting about an invasion of Polish plumbers in 2005 was passed by commissioners in a few minutes without any discussion.
