No more room at the inn
It's the joke that has turned out to be true - there really isn't enough space in the new, enlarged European Union.
Everyone has been so busy these last few years with the politics of expansion, that the physical requirements of a 25-nation European Union have been overlooked.
Hard to believe, I know, but in the pink granite-and-glass Brussels headquarters of the Council of Ministers, where the deals will be done and the decisions made in the future Europe, the people in charge of tables and chairs are trying to make space for the ministerial teams from Poland and the other nine candidate countries.
They don't have much time: the sophomores will be arriving in the next few weeks to sit in on EU meetings and get used to the place before they sign on fully in May next year.
The Council of Ministers' building was designed with enlargement in mind, but while the corridors are large enough to park cars in, the rooms do not provide enough space for hundreds of extra officials. Perhaps the architects thought that by naming the buildings' floors in tens instead of units (the fifth floor is called the fiftieth floor and the eighth the eightieth, and so on) the illusion of enough space would be created.
"You may laugh," said one member of a delegation from a current member state, "but it's true - no-one has a clue where everyone is going to sit."
Meanwhile, the search is on further along the road in Brussels for a bigger top table for the commissioners to sit at during the awkward six months between May and November 2004, when the current 20 commissioners will be joined by 10 new ones. It's a temporary problem because the new commission team, which takes office in November next year, will be smaller than Romano Prodi's existing team - only one commissioner for each member state instead of two each, currently, for the five biggest countries.
And during that six months of the inflated transitional commission team, there will, of course, be more commissioners than decent jobs for them all to do, which means that whoever lands the Polish commissionership will probably begin working life in charge of quill pens and inkpots.
The commission's most senior civil servant, Secretary-General David O'Sullivan, a dapper and discreet Irishman, puts it a little more diplomatically: "It will be a difficult period. The 10 additional commissioners probably won't have substantial portfolios, but they will all play a full part in the decision-making process - and we are trying to find a table big enough for them all to sit at."
Meanwhile, a bigger enlargement headache is soon to be addressed by all the member states - just where does Europe begin and end?
O'Sullivan says it is a serious issue which will have to be given full consideration soon, as more and more countries queue up for EU membership.
The traditional view is that Europe runs from the Atlantic to the Urals, with the Ural River acting as the boundary between Europe and Asia. Anyone claiming to be geographically "European" is more or less guaranteed EU membership once he meets the mind-numbing and increasing list of political, economic, socioeconomic, environmental and humanitarian criteria.
But there is concern that the current EU is going to overreach itself in a rolling programme of expansion for expansion's sake.
O'Sullivan again: "We do need to look at where Europe begins and ends. Otherwise, if we carry on, we'll get to Vladivostock, and then to Alaska, and then we will have achieved global governance."
He was joking of course - they'd never ever find a commission table big enough.
Geoff Meade is the European Union editor of the Press Association.
Everyone has been so busy these last few years with the politics of expansion, that the physical requirements of a 25-nation European Union have been overlooked.
Hard to believe, I know, but in the pink granite-and-glass Brussels headquarters of the Council of Ministers, where the deals will be done and the decisions made in the future Europe, the people in charge of tables and chairs are trying to make space for the ministerial teams from Poland and the other nine candidate countries.
They don't have much time: the sophomores will be arriving in the next few weeks to sit in on EU meetings and get used to the place before they sign on fully in May next year.
The Council of Ministers' building was designed with enlargement in mind, but while the corridors are large enough to park cars in, the rooms do not provide enough space for hundreds of extra officials. Perhaps the architects thought that by naming the buildings' floors in tens instead of units (the fifth floor is called the fiftieth floor and the eighth the eightieth, and so on) the illusion of enough space would be created.
"You may laugh," said one member of a delegation from a current member state, "but it's true - no-one has a clue where everyone is going to sit."
Meanwhile, the search is on further along the road in Brussels for a bigger top table for the commissioners to sit at during the awkward six months between May and November 2004, when the current 20 commissioners will be joined by 10 new ones. It's a temporary problem because the new commission team, which takes office in November next year, will be smaller than Romano Prodi's existing team - only one commissioner for each member state instead of two each, currently, for the five biggest countries.
And during that six months of the inflated transitional commission team, there will, of course, be more commissioners than decent jobs for them all to do, which means that whoever lands the Polish commissionership will probably begin working life in charge of quill pens and inkpots.
The commission's most senior civil servant, Secretary-General David O'Sullivan, a dapper and discreet Irishman, puts it a little more diplomatically: "It will be a difficult period. The 10 additional commissioners probably won't have substantial portfolios, but they will all play a full part in the decision-making process - and we are trying to find a table big enough for them all to sit at."
Meanwhile, a bigger enlargement headache is soon to be addressed by all the member states - just where does Europe begin and end?
O'Sullivan says it is a serious issue which will have to be given full consideration soon, as more and more countries queue up for EU membership.
The traditional view is that Europe runs from the Atlantic to the Urals, with the Ural River acting as the boundary between Europe and Asia. Anyone claiming to be geographically "European" is more or less guaranteed EU membership once he meets the mind-numbing and increasing list of political, economic, socioeconomic, environmental and humanitarian criteria.
But there is concern that the current EU is going to overreach itself in a rolling programme of expansion for expansion's sake.
O'Sullivan again: "We do need to look at where Europe begins and ends. Otherwise, if we carry on, we'll get to Vladivostock, and then to Alaska, and then we will have achieved global governance."
He was joking of course - they'd never ever find a commission table big enough.
Geoff Meade is the European Union editor of the Press Association.
