By Stavros Lygeros

On its 50th anniversary, the EU can claim quite a positive record. But anyone can see that the integration process has come to a halt. The two expansion waves have taken a hefty toll on political unification. It’s not just the practical difficulty of finding a single voice for 27 governments. Most importantly, EU attempts to wean itself from American hegemony have been seriously undermined.

London is not alone in this effort anymore. Rather, it is spearheading a group of states that lend it greater political weight. Britain has for years weighed the EU down to a level of intergovernmental cooperation.

Donald Rumsfeld’s emphasis on the division between the “old” and the “new” Europe was not completely arbitrary. The EU is run by a dividing line that may shift but never goes away. On one hand are those who want to see the EU as a big global player. On the other, there are those who wish to keep Europe subordinate to Washington. The clash emerges at every opportunity: the Iraq war, energy cooperation with Russia, the anti-missile shield.

Eastern European states such as Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary do not just fall behind British diplomacy; often, they are the ones to take the first step. They often make claims and objections without any will to negotiate in a constructive fashion. It’s not just that they are strangers to the EU’s consensus-building habits. Their inflexibility comes mostly from a feeling of superiority drawn from their US alliance.

The EU has two options. One is to fall back on familiar tactics and small, often rhetorical steps that lead nowhere. The second is to cut ties altogether and implement a policy of so-called “reinforced cooperation” with ad hoc partnerships in projects that could inject the Union with a fresh momentum. The eurozone is a precedent and could be the model for a core of states.