Roxburgh's Europe: March diary

Angus Roxburgh takes a wry look at life in Brussels.

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A sad month for Europe. The Madrid bombings did what no amount of appealing to the "European idea" could do.

People across the continent stood together in three minutes' silence, and EU leaders not only rushed through anti-terrorism measures but even agreed to stop bickering over the terms of a future EU constitution.

The EU's little-known official motto is "Unity in diversity". Perhaps "Unity in adversity" would be more appropriate.

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Accentuate the positive

A BBC News Online reader has asked me to write about the "one most positive thing" in the Brussels apparatus.

I'm tempted to mention the coffee in the bars of the European Parliament, which is really very good, but I'm not sure that's what he meant.

Um. I'll come back to this.

But the insinuation that I am usually critical about the EU is a nice antidote to the alternative view, held by the Daily Telegraph newspaper, which regards me as an inveterate, or even invertebrate, Europhile.

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Just say no

MEPs this month voted for an amendment to a bill on drugs, tabled by Dutch members, calling for "subsidiarity". That's the euro-jargon for giving individual countries lots of latitude in implementing directives from Brussels.

The Dutch obviously wanted subsidiarity on drugs because they did not wish their own lax legislation to be overruled by central decrees.

Interestingly, however, the motion passed only with the help of votes from British Conservative MEPs.

Now, did that signify a spectacular new, pro-drugs policy in the Tory party?

Or did they just notice the word "subsidiarity" and think they were voting for an anti-European motion?

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Into the void?

Poor old Strasbourg. I hate to say this, with a European Parliament election just coming up, but... what's it for?

This month I listened to Mrs Avril Doyle, an MEP from Ireland, making such a passionate speech about the EU constitution, you might have thought her life depended upon it.

It was a really good speech. But I couldn't help wondering: what difference would it have made if she had not delivered it? Indeed, if the whole debate had never taken place?

In the afternoon a debate on EU enlargement was attended by - I counted - 40 MEPs. Not a single member who didn't intend to speak bothered to turn up.

Well, I suppose that's what you call being realistic. Because not a word they uttered will affect enlargement either.

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Losing something

Parliament and Commission are recruiting dozens of translators and interpreters to cope with enlargement, which will raise the number of official EU languages from 11 to 20 - or 21 if Cyprus is reunited (bringing Turkish, if not yet Turkey, into the fold).

But many of the newcomers will struggle with EU jargon. One new Hungarian recruit told me she thought they would have to coin new words and phrases for expressions that simply don't exist.

Perusal of a Slovak brochure seemed to illustrate the point. It attempts to explain some EU principles: "Princip udel'ovania kompetencii", for example (that's the principle of the division of powers).

But the next principle had the translators stumped. It says, in perfect Slovak: "Princip subsidiarity".

Oh dear, yet another beautiful language destroyed by EU-speak.

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As long as it's white

There are also fresh problems for the EU's filing clerks. Until now official documents have been colour-coded according to language, to make them easier to find on shelves. A booklet edged in red is in Danish; light blue is for French; green for Italian, and so on.

But it's been decided that with 20 languages there aren't enough distinct colours to go round.

So from now on, all EU documents will just be white.

"It's a nightmare," says one clerk at the publications depot in Luxembourg, balefully surveying a warehouse full of documents awaiting distribution.

"We'll end up sifting through 20 different piles before we find the language we're looking for!"

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Watch this space

I promise I will come back to the reader's request for something positive.

In the meantime, I do think subsidiarity is a top-notch idea. Just a shame it's untranslatable - even into English.