大象传媒

21 december is going to be a busy time for and as they criss-cross Europe, passportless to celebrate the widening of the

From that date, the borderless part of the European Union, the free travel area, is going to include that joined the EU three years ago. But the real action is happening now in the snowy woods between Ukraine and Slovakia. Two border police whizz past the silver birch trees on their rather snazzy new snowmobiles, leaving a shower of white in their wake.

Back in headquarters a half-hour drive away, an alarm rings and another policeman checks which camera has signalled the alert. He winds back the film to see what movement has caused the alarm. It was only a bird.

There's no need to alert the men on the snowmobile or any of the other guards patrolling the border. It's all part of a massive investment to protect a border that is less than 65 miles long. Five years ago there were nearly 300 border police now there are just short of 900.

The snowmobiles aren't their only new kit. They have quadbikes, top of the range four-wheel drive Mercedes, and vans mounted with night-sighted CCTV cameras.

They have 70 police dogs, special sensors to detect people hiding in coaches or good trains and they operate out of seven brand new police stations. One particularly sensitive area of the border has 250 security cameras along a stretch of less than 20 miles.

This has all cost 53 million pounds, much of it from European Union coffers. It appears that it is working and illegal immigrants are being caught. In the control room, we watch black and white film shot a few days ago - three men climbing under a fence that marks the border.

Less hi-tech means work as well and the head of the border police tells me proudly that, whilst out driving, he spotted two men crossing a field and promptly arrested them.

Of those caught, the biggest number are from Moldova while there are also a lot from India, Pakistan and China. They are all trying to get into the European Union and the reason this border is being strengthened is out of fear that, any who make it will be able to travel to most parts of the EU.

By the way, I can't explain the one Australian who was caught trying to get into Ukraine from Slovakia. I hope to speak to some of those detained tomorrow and, if I'm successful, you can read their stories here on Monday.

UPDATE
It seems while we were out playing with snowmobiles, Slovak security agents further towards the Hungarian border were arresting three men for trying to smuggle enriched uranium.

I am now on the Ukrainian side of the border and there seem to me three big questions.

鈥� Did they have a buyer in mind?

鈥� Is this really about building a nuclear bomb?

鈥� Where did the material come from - could it indeed have been smuggled across they very border we were looking at?

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Should the House of Commons vote on the before Gordon Brown is allowed to sign it?

That's the Conservatives' reading of the from . They say the committee reserves its position on the treaty which means ministers cannot sign unless they get specific approval from Parliament. But they admit the government has ignored this rule in the past and probably will again.

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In the centre of a roundabout going into on the outskirts of Brussels, is a statue of a horse, a monument to the tradition of buying and selling the beasts in these parts.

Until the advent of the tractor, farm-horses were one of Belgium's biggest exports. But the Belgians aren't such expert horse traders in modern times. Ever since the election in June, coalition talks have dragged on and on but without a resolution.

It is now 170 days since there has been a Government and some are beginning to notice the effects. My colleagues on 大象传媒 News 24 are doing a series of broadcasts all day on Wednesday 28 November to illustrate this.

Two places

The French and Flemish speaking areas have different attitudes, cultures and, above all, economies as well as different languages.

One of the blocks to forming a Government is places like Vilvoorde/Villevorde, originally a Flemish town, where French speakers have moved in and vote for their own parties. But the main problem is the Flemish desire for more political power for their region, and a desire to stop subsidising rust-belt Wallonia, with its high unemployment and rather unfashionable, statist approach. But does not having a Government actually matter ?

Power vacuum

The former government is, of course, carrying on, in a caretaker role. But this caretaker doesn't have the right to rearrange the furniture or even turn up the heating.

On the streets I don't find anyone who thinks it matters much. One woman tells me that it's a good thing the politicians are taking a long time to solve such difficult problems which have bedevilled Belgium since its creation. Another woman says that it's an awful thing and sends out a very bad signal.

But both agree it hasn't made any real impact. A man tells me "I think we can handle it without a government. I think it's obvious we don't need a government." A woman says "it's made no difference, we don't need it," and she concludes with a cry of "anarchy!"

But does divorce become more likely, the longer this goes on? in cooperation with the smaller, won the largest number of seats in Parliament in . The NFA say support is growing for their vision of a peaceful separation.

: "At the end of the day there is no reason for Belgium to exist. But a lot of people in Brussels and Wallonia want to stick with the Belgium state. It's a bit of a paradox, the guys who want to stick with that framework are doing more and more things that make people in Flanders think "no, it can't work this way".

"People see when Flanders asks moderate things, to bring some powers from the federal level to the regional level, the French speakers don't want to move. So people are saying if they won't move the only solution is to split up. After this the formation of a federal government will become more and more difficult each time."

Another Belgium

, doesn't agree. A minister of state in the last Government for , he says: "Flemish people would lose a lot if Belgium did not exist, but we need another Belgium.

"The request for more powers for the regions is not a silly request. If you want to live together it's good to sleep in separate rooms in the same house."

I point out that can be the first step towards divorce. He says "in Belgium it wouldn't lead to divorce, but better understanding and dialogue."

But he is worried the lack of Government is having an impact: " The increase in oil prices, the increase in food prices puts the question of purchasing power on the table and people are getting really impatient.

"Prices are going up and something has to be done, the caretaker government cannot take the drastic measures that are necessary, lifting some taxes and increasing small pensions and so on. People are starting to suffer now."

Brabant horse

Remembering that sturdy shire horse on the Villevorde roundabout, I also talk to

He says "we have two communities that have been put together in 1830, nearly by accident, with a different economic situation, different languages, who live together for more that one hundred years and who will still live together tomorrow. But it's a question of agreeing on the house in which you live.

"It is clear that after such a long period there are problems. It's not very good for the image of Belgium. With the new year approaching, we need a new budget. With high petrol prices, people are beginning to feel it more. In the past they would have felt it by now because the Belgian Franc would be under pressure, but with the euro that sort of pressure doesn't exist any more.

"Those who think the Flemish people dream of going to the Netherlands or the Walloons to the French are wrong. They have more in common together than the neighbours. History has made something real and you have Brussels in the middle and that will be one of the main reasons to stick together."

What unites the people I've spoken to is a complete and absolute lack of a sense of panic. They are all pretty convinced, that somehow, despite all the failures and breakdown of talks, something will eventually be cobbled together, that the cart-horse will get there in the end.

Perhaps it's time to start organising a sweepstake.

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Perhaps a bit late, but I've just finished reading a rather fascinating document from It's called and it's a detailed, subject-by-subject forty page run-down of the Lisbon Treaty, which is due to be signed early next month.

The authors are enthusiasts for the treaty, concluding that it means that defence and foreign policy "are raised to the rank they should have had for years". They say there will be new EU policies on energy, research and civil protection, and home affairs policy (freedom, justice and security) will gain "new impetus."

They say next year may be difficult as the treaty goes through national parliaments and a referendum in Ireland and "a way will have to be found to prevent any isolated negative votes from blocking Europe again." They accept, however, that the future European Union will be much looser than dreamed of by the founding six nations.

But the Government won't like the next part. Europolitics says the blueprint for this treaty was "obscure and complex." "Make no mistake about it", say the authors, "that was its main objective." "Without a smokescreen how could Eurosceptics and federalists, proponents of and opponents to the consitution ever have been reconciled?" They go on to say that the talent of the political leaders "consisted in making extremely discreet the fact that the new treaty and the dull Constitution are like two peas in a pod."

The reason this document is such an essential read for those interested in the treaty is that there still isn't an official pull-together of all the bits and pieces that will make up the actual document that is signed by the leaders.

But, here too, help is at hand. Peadar 贸 Broin from has done the sterling work of constructing to help the Irish public make up their minds when the vote in the referendum next year.

Have I read it yet? Er, well... There are plenty of long nights and I hope aeroplane journeys between now and 13th December.

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• - What's this?

is about to publish its "health check" on the which some argue is crying out for euthanasia rather than doctoring. But the headline is bound to be their proposal to limit such as the Queen and Prince Charles.

In 2005, the Queen received just over 拢465,000. That would be cut by around 拢140,000. The Prince of Wales received more than 拢100,000 and that would be cut by just over 拢3,000.

This may be the commission playing hard politics. Many British people dislike the CAP, dislike the idea of their money going to rich farmers and expect their government to do something about it.

Gordon Brown is particularly keen on CAP reform. This is the commission's way of asking, if the government is so hot on the idea, why they blocked this reform last time around. Do the government and the British people have more enthusiasm for agri-business and aristocrats than reform, they would ask? But if it's smart politics, is it also good sense?

I've been to to find out. In a cattle shed on this 3,000-acre farm, clouds of straw, glinting golden in the winter sun, hang for a moment before descending in a shower on surprised looking cows.

It's coming from a brand new bit of kit worth around 拢70,000, held in the jaws of a tractor. It's driven and operated by one person. Andy, the stockman, can do this job in minutes, whereas in the past it would have taken three men an hour's worth of back-breaking labour.

This is one of the farms that would suffer under the commission's proposals. It may not exactly get showered with gold from above - and the company is reluctant to talk figures - but typically a farm of this size would get around quarter of a million pounds of European Union money, and would lose about 拢64,000 under the commission's proposals.

The farm is held in trust for the descendants of a Victorian shipping magnate from Liverpool who wanted a place near London when he became an MP. But is it the descendants of a 19th Century millionaire who benefit from the EU money, or the rest of us?

The driving force behind the farm and its commitment to the environment is Richard Sterling, a genial man who's clearly committed to doing more with the land than simply making a big profit.

This is most definitely mixed farming, the sort the ecologists like: from barley to poppies for morphine, from Aberdeen Angus to free-range giant black pigs. Richard shows me one of those hedgerows that we hear a lot about. It too is mixed, sloe berries and rosehips amid the thorns, and all a statutory two metres from the edge of the crop field.

Again, environmentalists see this as really important because the hedgerows provide homes and food for small mammals and birds. One of the purposes of the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy was to refocus it from simply encouraging food production to looking after and maintaining a rural environment.

Richard Sterling's fear is that if the subsidies are cut, some farmers would turn away from such environmental protection. He says that farming has been through such a tough time recently, with bad harvests, disease and pressure from supermarkets that the last thing they need is another change, and one that means less money.

He says that farmers will always look after their core business, which is after all making money by producing food; but if the European Union wants people to do "the nice things on the edges" then it shouldn't put the squeeze on the system. He argues that if the subsidies are drastically cut, some farmers will not bother with getting them at all and simply turn all their land over to more profitable cereal production.

wouldn't agree. He was an advisor to Nick Brown, when he was agriculture minister and now runs . We're peering over the big white gate into the Queen's estate at

Jack's not in favour of any subsidies unless they directly help the environment or the poor, and he would means-test EU money. He says, "It's a bit odd the monarch gets income support from Brussels. This proposal from the commission is less ambitious than the one rejected last time by the UK and Germany. It doesn't tackle the core injustice of the CAP, in that it favours industrial over pastoral, big over small, and four countries (France, Spain, Italy and Germany) over others, like Romania and Poland with big and poor rural populations."

What do you think?

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• - What's this?

Iraq in the EU? Perhaps I should have said Israel. Why is the EU like Voltaire's God? And what happened to the latest proposal for a new European charter? Read on.

Yesterday was one of those days. should have been a doddle but first my phone wouldn鈥檛 charge, then no internet connection would work, then our equipment blew up before we were about to go on Radio 4's PM programme, so while trying unsuccessfully to correct that, I missed an interview with the foreign secretary and then our piece got dropped from the Ten O'Clock News because a better story came along. And back at base it was proving impossible to put comments up on this blog, for which I apologise. Still we did manage to get on radio bulletins, 大象传媒 World and News 24.

Enough of my insignificant woes, but it was a pity because it was a rather interesting speech in a number of ways. First Miliband is one of the few front rank British politicians who really believes in promoting the case for the European union. Talking about expanding defence capability and doing it in Bruges where Mrs Thatcher made her famous speech was a deliberate red rag to a bull.

Although he must have disappointed the former Belgian prime minister, vetoed by Britain as president of the commission, Jean Luc Dehaene, who said he was looking forward to hearing the British government鈥檚 argument in favour of the Lisbon treaty.

The foreign secretary was however tackling eurosceptics on their own territory. As he pointed out, drawing a titter from the audience, 鈥淏ruges鈥� to most British political animals means a leading Eurosceptic think tank. .

Most of the media focused on his ideas for greater European military cooperation: it was interesting and fits a certain 鈥渘ews template鈥� that gets the words 鈥淓uropean Army鈥� into the headlines (for some reason Nato never gets called EuroAmerican Army). Interestingly the foreign secretary 诲颈诲苍鈥檛 talk about a new 鈥淓uropean defence charter鈥� and a formal review of EU military capabilities. I suspect that someone pointed out that another EU charter sounded a bit like the institutional navel-gazing Mr Miliband was keen to condemn.

That鈥檚 what he took out. This is what he put in, by way of an ad lib. Mr Milband said because of the threats facing the world 鈥淚f the EU 诲颈诲苍鈥檛 exist we would have to invent it" (what Voltaire said of God).

This is controversial in some quarters but I wonder how many politicians would agree with what he went on to say? Note-taking was near impossible in the dark of the auditorium, but the gist of it was that the EU has to have a an appointed (that is unelected) commission at its centre to represent the interests of Europe as a whole, rather than the nation states. Hardly controversial in Brussels but I suspect in an ideal world many British politicians would only re-invent the EU with a much curtailed commission.

But the 鈥渄id he really say that?鈥� part of the speech remained his suggestion that one day North Africa and the Middle East might join the EU. I just don鈥檛 agree with Rory Mitchell's reading of the speech: he clearly talks of a free trade area 鈥渋n line with the single market not as an alternative to membership, but potentially as a step towards it鈥�.

But just to be sure, a colleague asked him about this in an interview. I haven鈥檛 got the tape in front of me, but his reply was on the lines that it was obeying EU rules, not geography, that mattered; who could say what the situation would be in 2030; and it was important not to put up barriers. When pressed again he said that he knew there was a debate in Israel about closer ties with the EU and even membership and repeated that it was important not to put up artificial barriers.

On the surface this is a pretty outr茅 suggestion. It will confirm the view of those who hanker after a closer union that enlargement is a British plot. A plot to so dilute the Union that it becomes little more than a club of states that share roughly the same sort of values. Indeed according to Mr Miliband鈥檚 non-geographical criteria I can鈥檛 see any reason why Japan and Australia and South Africa shouldn鈥檛 be eligible right now. Perhaps this is a plan for a putative world government.

But I suspect it's more to do with classic negotiating technique, a deliberate over-bidding. In December President Sarkozy will get his 鈥済roup of the wise鈥� to look at the EU in 2030 and make it quite clear he wants them to rule out Turkish membership. The French president knows that many feel that Eastern Europe was rather indigestible and after Croatia the door should be closed on not just Turkey but the western Balkans.

Mr Miliband is planting his flag firmly on diametrically opposite ground. Let battle commence. An alternative vision of European defence? An attack on protectionism? Defence of enlargement? This speech was aimed at an audience not in Bruges, not in Brussels, not in London, but in Paris.

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Should the European Union extend into the Middle East?

The Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, seems to think so. He's where, of course, that the EU should be less about concentrating power at the centre and more about nation states doing more together.

In some ways, re-reading it, it's striking how uncontroversial a lot of her arguments sound today. But she might not approve of Mr Miliband's enthusiasm for the organisation. He will say that the European Union is not a superpower but a model power, because global institutions such as the UN are too big and nation states too small to cope with today's problems.

Intriguingly, he'll hint at the possibility of extending the European Union across the Mediterranean. He will say that, by 2030, the EU's single market should be extended to the Middle East and North Africa. He'll also say that membership of the European Union should not be based on geography but accepting the EU's rules. Is he really suggesting that Iraq could one day be in the EU? I don't know and I haven't seen the full speech but I hope to ask him. Watch this space.

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Just off the main road near Athens airport is a little block building with a cramped car park packed with old pick-up trucks, estate cars and the odd tractor.

One stubbly weather-beaten old man is accompanied by his wife done up in her Sunday best. This is a big day. As he undoes knobbly, bulging sacks he carefully hands her the rough rope and pieces of plastic wire that held them closed. It looks like a ritual burnished by decades.

Then, a glorious sight. A cornucopia of black and green olives, some with their leaves still attached, tumble from the sacks into stainless steel pits. A hole soon appears in the mass of olives as the fruit are sucked down onto a conveyor belt on their way into a little industrial unit, where they are crushed into olive oil.

The little factory is filled with that lovely fruity freshly-mown-grass smell of good olive oil. And there鈥檚 of the stuff here gushing out of pipes, after the olives make their way through the crusher.

Terrible reputation

The farmers, for all the world looking like anxious but proud fathers at a sports day, watch carefully as their product glugs into big churns, which they then load up in their trucks and take home to decant into to sell round the neighbourhood. They used to be paid EU money according to a formula based on a combination of oil produced and number of trees, but now there鈥檚 a different approach, which takes into account field size but no longer attaches any weight to volume of production.

I鈥檓 sure everybody here is honest as the day is long, but are they inadvertently responsible for the European Union having a terrible reputation for fraud and money-wasting?

Each year, the Court of Auditors fails to give the thumbs up to the EU's accounts. It takes and refuses to give details of the projects it fails, but just about each year the Greek government and olive farmers are given a not-particularly-honourable mention.

The European Commission publicly says the auditors' verdict is largely the fault of the member countries, who after all do pay out more than 70% of the money. It's they, says the commission, who don鈥檛 keep a proper track of the money they are spending.

Privately, officials say that Greece is perhaps the worst offender, the problem child with a long record of incompetent accounting. (Of course, Greece is not the only offender. Read this about an apparent failure in England that is going to cost the UK millions in fines.)

The owner of the plant, Neil Papachristostou, doesn鈥檛 get any European Union money but he sees the problems. He says the system used to be very complex but now it's simpler, and farmers needn鈥檛 make another declaration for six years. He thinks fraud - the deliberate overclaiming of the number of trees - used to happen a lot but is now rare.

Other farmers confirm the system is simpler now. A couple of old boys tell me they just have to pop down to the town hall and sign some papers now. But they say it's no wonder that it's been a mess, because Greece is only just bringing in a proper land register and register of olive groves.

Not quite a wink

We follow one of the farmers, Takis Kolias, back to his estate and watch as two men climb a ladder, and use what looks like a big yellow plastic comb to tug the olives from the tree. They rain down onto a tarpaulin below and it seems to take an age to denude one tree. It must be back-breaking work.

This is just one plot owned by the farmer. He tells me that he鈥檚 got 1,500 trees and that he's honest about it. But others, perhaps with fewer trees, do exaggerate, he says. He adds the Greek government can only tell Brussels what farmers have declared to be the case.

Does he have any criticism of the system? He smiles, doesn鈥檛 quite wink, and say it seems to take a long time to get the money. I ask him what he means, as he鈥檚 obviously hinting at something but he just repeats that it does seem to take an awfully long time to get the money.

I later find out that many farmers think intermediate organisations hang on to the vast sums from the European Union, put them in a bank for a few months and cream off the interest. I have absolutely no idea whether this is a popular myth, something that might have happened once in one region, or common practice.

But my next pretty obvious question, I think, shows a real difficulty with the system. I ask Mr Kolias, how much money he gets from the EU. He doesn鈥檛 know, so we ask if he could check, as it's important to the story. The next day he says his accountant doesn鈥檛 know but he鈥檒l check with the co-operative he's a member of. They tell him about the formula used to calculate payments, but don鈥檛 know the actual amount. He says it's probably too little to worry about.

Satellite photography

But things are changing. In Brussels I鈥檇 been told that there was a new guy in charge of payments and he was determined to clean up the Greek government鈥檚 act.

The new guy is John Karatzoglou of the He ruefully agrees he has got one of the most difficult jobs in Greek public life. The scheme to register land is under way and with reasonable ease. He tells me that if in the past his country has been the black sheep, tomorrow鈥檚 annual report will find it to be a grey sheep. White sheep by next year, he thinks.

(I won't be covering the publication of the report, as I have had to take time off for family matters. This will also mean no regular piece on Thursday - normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.)

But does Mr Karatzoglou agree with the commission that this problem, this annual failure, is all the fault of member countries, whether Greece or Great Britain? No.

He says: "The so-called bureaucracy of Brussels is not a myth, it is a reality, and the member states are facing this reality and trying to cope. Let me give you an example. For three years, we鈥檝e been discussing the simplification of the new single payment scheme and nothing has been done. That is a fact. The is difficult even for experts to understand, so can you imagine how many of the 500,000 farmers understand? Every time we try to make things easier we make them difficult."

This is a pretty gloomy conclusion. Single payments are meant to be simpler: you鈥檝e got a field of a certain size and you get a certain amount of money. Twice the size and you get twice as much money. Simple? Not really. You can鈥檛 really expect the EU to allow people to plant one olive tree and call it an olive grove. So there is a gradation of density that earns more money.

It seems that unless farmers all become accountants, or the Common Agricultural Policy is buried once and for all, the EU鈥檚 finances will never get a clean bill of health.

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On a recent Radio 5 live phone-in programme, supposedly on the I was struck by how many callers' main reason for disliking the EU was "waste of money" and "corruption".

Many of them cited the fact that

And it's that time of year again - next Tuesday, for the 13th year running, the will refuse to clear the accounts because of irregularities.

The European Commission knows how damaging this is and argues that:

鈥� Most of the spending is done by national governments, and so it's their fault for not keeping proper accounts

鈥� The accounting procedure is very tight, and under these rules many big institutions would not pass - the former head of the suggested that if he was operating under similar rules, the UK鈥檚 accounts might have failed

鈥� Most of the errors are technical rather than fraudulent, and could be due to paperwork that鈥檚 lost five years after the end of a project, or academics carrying out EU-funded research failing to fill in proper hour-by-hour time-sheets

I don鈥檛 think the auditors buy all of this.

They don鈥檛 distinguish between money being mis-spent due to bad paperwork and cash going missing because of deliberate criminal intent. I think this year they will find that the situation is getting better on agricultural payments but that there are still real problems with roads and bridges and the like.

Also, the commission does spend at least 20% of the budget and some of this spending is regularly criticised.

The improvement in the payments is largely because money now goes directly to farmers for the size of fields they own, and this is easier to double check using satellite pictures than the number of cows they own.

But there鈥檚 no doubt that between 70 and 80% of the EU鈥檚 spending does go through the national governments. There鈥檚 talk about countries coming up with their own audited statement saying that all the money has been spent properly. But only Britain, Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark have shown the remotest interest.

I want to check some of these claims out for myself and see where things go wrong. But it鈥檚 a nightmare pinning down real examples.

This may be part of the story itself. The Court of Auditors doesn鈥檛 make public the irregularities it finds: the auditors feel their job is to audit, not to name and shame. The commission deals directly with the nation states, and can't give examples either. The nation states?

Well that鈥檚 what we are trying at the moment... If you run a small country and don鈥檛 keep your books properly, have built a bridge and creamed off the cash, or you lost the accounts for some fields five years ago, do drop me a line... I promise to be very indiscreet.

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Whatever you think of Franco Frattini, the European Justice Commissioner, you couldn鈥檛 say that he lacks ambition.

He鈥檚 proposing a host of new EU laws from collecting information on aircraft passengers, to plans to block sites on the internet that tell you how to make a bomb.

You also couldn鈥檛 accuse him of cowardice. His report on how countries are doing so far in coordinating the fight against terrorism has a go at most EU countries, including the United Kingdom.

Five years ago, the European Union鈥檚 countries agreed a common approach to laws to fight terrorism but the report from the commission is very critical of, well, most nations apart from Malta and Greece, it seems.

Outlawing websites

You might expect from the general stereotype that the commission would be saying Britain was too harsh.

Not a bit of it. Our laws are too soft evidently.

What they actually wanted is for all countries to have a specific category of terrorist offences with tougher penalties spelt out in law.

The easiest way to do this would be to have an offence of "terrorist murder" (and terrorist GBH, and terrorist incitement and so on).

This is not what happens under English or Scottish law, where the offence is already covered in some way: there is an offence of murder, and a set of guidelines, not laws, that suggests how judges should approach sentencing. The commission feels the UK along with Italy, Germany, Spain and Ireland falls down here.

Now there is a proposal for more harmonisation.

The new laws planned would make sure the European Union鈥檚 27 countries had similar and specific laws making it illegal to provoke terrorism, recruit terrorists or train them.

The internet gets some special attention, and one of the aims of the report is to outlaw sites that either exhort people to violence or tell them how to make bombs.

Tracking explosives

Probably more controversial is the Passenger Name Records scheme, which would mean that anyone travelling into the European Union from outside would have their name and other details stored, so that the information can be shared between countries.

It very much mirrors the American system, and Britain has something similar, but the government is keen on everybody else joining in. But it doesn鈥檛 apply to people travelling within the EU.

Another plan in the pipeline is an agreement with those who legally use explosives to vet those who work in the industry, keep a track of suspicious transactions, and alert others when something goes missing or is stolen.

There鈥檚 no doubt there are at least two political purposes behind this. First of all, politicians of all stripes are desperate to avoid blame (and to be less cynical, avoid guilt) if some terrible incident does happen.

They would much rather being accused of doing too much, of over-reacting, by people safe in their armchairs yelling at the TV, than being accuse of doing too little by distraught and bereaved relatives of victims.

And the European Union has a self-declared and now very obvious purpose to reconnect with its often suspicious and hostile citizens by doing something that most people regard as worthwhile. Fighting terrorism, along with climate change, comes right at the top of that list.

Loopholes

Of course, many in the UK and elsewhere dislike the fact that it is the European Commission that has the sole right to propose EU laws and dislike the fact that they nearly always end up with greater harmonisation.

That is an important political objection, and this is a case which is bound to exercise those who dislike the EU鈥檚 direction of travel. But what about the practical policies?

I can鈥檛 see many people objecting to greater co-ordination of those in the explosive industries all over Europe (although I am all ears if you think this is wrong).

The commission says its aim is to avoid terrorists using loopholes in one country to wreak havoc in another, to eliminate the weak links.

But does it make sense to have nearly identical law in the Czech republic and Spain? And should there be specific categories of terrorist offence?

If you have an offence of "terrorist murder" do you have to have similar laws of "race hate murder"? Sexual murder? Murders as a result of domestic violence? Murder of children?

And does that suggest that murdering someone "because they looked at me funny" is, if not all right, less serious than these categories? (Presumably not for the person murdered and their family and friends.)

If so why? Common sense would suggest that harsh sentences might not make a lot of difference to ideologically committed killers willing to blow themselves up, but might on the margins make a difference to someone who blows their top when their parking space is nicked.

As ever, I invite and welcome your views.

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Some news stories exist in a little media bubble, observed, not experienced, by most of the audience.

During my little break in Britain I was struck how much that certainly isn't the case with immigration from the eastern European Union. From hearing Polish on the streets of London, to signposts on a roundabout in a seaside town, to a Polish Chinese deli, to sketches on comedy programmes, it's near the top of the public debate. Last week the government again had to confess it had got the figures wrong.

My visit also coincided with a report on the projected increase in Britain's population. This prompted a fascinating blog from my colleague Evan Davis and some interesting posts from his readers. I hope it would not be too incestuous if I have my say.

I was really surprised by Evan's assertion that Britain is less crowded than Belgium, and would continue to be so even if there is a huge and radical increase in the size of the UK population. ("No!" says my son, and my wife indicates she thinks this is rubbish, using language too colourful to be allowed here.) Evan, I'm sure, is right, but the vulgar reaction of my nearest and dearest makes my point that it certainly doesn't feel that way.

Why is that? Is Belgium just better laid out? I don't think London has changed that much in the two years that I have been away, but the sheer density and volume of people on the streets actually feels pretty disturbing now. Brussels is just a much quieter place. London spreads and sprawls, sucking the life out of the suburbs, whereas Ghent and Leuven are pleasant cities within commuting distance of the capital.

Evan also make the point that the Netherlands is even more densely packed. I only know Amsterdam and The Hague reasonably well but neither feels crushed. The Dutch countryside isn't much to write home about and there's huge urban sprawl. But it doesn't feel head-bustingly bad. Of course, there is great Dutch angst about migration but that's more to do with culture than crowds. Are there any Dutch readers who feel in need of space?

But it is the debate about migration that gives this population projection a sharper edge. A number of Evan's correspondents single out the European Union as the villain of the piece. One of them suspects the will undermine the British opt-out on immigration policy. But others say that right now Britain will only be able to control its own migration policy if it breaks free of EU requirements.

Well yes and no. There's no doubt the huge number of Polish workers in the UK stems from the fact that they joined the EU three years ago and because we are fellow members of an organisation that claims that the free movement of workers is

But there's an irony here. Britain has a bit of a reputation for opting out. We've opted out of the euro, immigration policy, and the "no borders" agreement. The Lisbon Treaty will allow opt-outs on policing, justice and, arguably, the

But Britain enthusiastically embraced the free movement of workers from the countries that joined the EU in 2004, when most of the other members were opting out. All except Sweden and Ireland adopted barriers against workers from the east.

At the time, it was felt that Britain was being the forward-looking free-market member of the club while others were protectionist and reacting to popular prejudices rather than looking at hard economics. I haven't quite heard ministers say, "They were right," but they must feel that way. But was the policy misguided, mishandled, or is Britain just undergoing another bout of good old-fashioned fear of foreigners? I presume in Paris you still can't get your U-bend unblocked on Sunday?

Since 2006, 10 countries have lifted their original restrictions, but the big economies of France and Germany are among those that have kept them. Britain has put barriers in place to stop any possible mass migration from Romania or Bulgaria. What there is now is a hotch-potch of national measure across the EU, which is presumably what those who disapprove of the organisation would want.

But those countries that do restrict movement of workers can only do so until April 2009, although they can carry on for a couple more years if they prove their labour market will be seriously disrupted. I wonder if the British debate will have any impact on their arguments?

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