Be afraid, be very afraid.

It’s that time again. Thankfully, due to European Union enlargement, it occurs less often, but the French - and Nicholas Sarkozy in particular - have the presidency of the great European behemoth.

The rotating Presidency, which lasts for six months and next has the Czechs at the helm from January, ensures that the European institution can, and easily does, lurch from one direction to the next, adopting one nation’s priorities often at the expense of others.

With twenty-seven members, and more queuing up to join, one can see why the Lisbon Treaty (or New Constitution) would want to bring in a more permanent Presidency. When you have a plodding predictable German Chancellor at the helm (and let’s face it German chancellor’s ARE predictable) there’s normally not much to get excited about. When you have a dashing, dynamic and willful ego like Nicholas Sarkozy let loose then anything can happen. So watch that space.

If there’s a vacuum to fill, Sarkozy will fill it to overflowing.

Already he has been at work doing his level best to twist arms, if not break them, in his attempt to see that the pulse in the Lisbon Treaty still keeps beating. As the corpse of the Monster lay prostrate, hemorrhaging the blood of authority and the putrid smell of decaying credibility filled the atmosphere, Sarkozy entertained the Polish President with a half Nelson (or the French equivalent – a demi-Napoleon?) and made him some offers he couldn’t refuse.

We don’t yet know what was said, but what we do know is that having previously said he would not ratify the Lisbon treaty because the Irish vote had made such an act “pointless”, President Lech Kaczyński, has now decided to do all in his power to get everybody to sign it. Yes, including the Irish.

Maybe, Kaczyński, had been playing a game all along? Maybe he wanted to extract some deals from the French directly or from the EU with the help of the French (or both) – we can’t yet say, but what we do know is that in time the deal will become visible and the price revealed.

That’s politics folks, and the European version ain’t any prettier or more palatable - and certainly ain’t more democratic.

Of course the supporters of the Lisbon Treaty will say that’s why we need an elected President – to avoid such shoddy shenanigans and give a more even, predictable and accountable standard of behaviour.

Hmmn. I just don’t buy it. Politics and gaining political advantage will always be at the core of the EU beast and whoever desires – no doubt with quiet desperation – to become the elected Grande Supremo will be cutting deals left right and centre to buy, bully and blackmail the support required. If anything it may be more opaque, more sordid.

And, as for it being more democratic and accountable – even if every citizen Schmidt of Europe was given a vote in a Presidential race – pace the United states of America – the idea that anything other than a media invention, a caricature drawn from prejudiced national stereotypes, will be able to triumph in what would undoubtedly be a very low turnout, is laughable.

In the United States the English language – almost but not quite universally – acts and acted as a glue between disparate immigrant groups. The American Dream, commonly understood as the ideal that you can be anything you want to be – from a life-guard to the President (pace Ronald Reagan) also pulls different cultural backgrounds together.

In the United States of Europe the 23 official languages – and the resolute defence of them as a cultural right - act as a solvent that keeps people apart – and you can bet your life with absolute certainty of immortality – that the French ain’t going to let English have the role it has in the USA.

And what is the European ideal the pulls us together? No doubt it’s written down somewhere, in some European tract with chapters, paragraphs, clauses and sub-clauses, Annexes, Appendices and diagrams. What’s certain is it doesn’t beat in our heart, it isn’t taken in with our mothers milk. It counts for nothing.

The French Presidency will be holding summits and taking initiatives here there and everywhere – pushing the French vision of Europe, which by definition promotes French interests (and I don’t blame them for that). There’s currently a meeting on the future of Ukrainian membership and there’s the new “Club Med” initiative to create a Union of the Mediterranean – which Sarkozy tried but failed to keep Germany and Britain out of (although they would have been paying for it). It will have 43 member states. There’ll be more initiatives too.

What this shows is that the Europe Union is, ultimately, an unaccountable, unwieldy, unworkable, unsustainable disaster waiting to happen. It was difficult enough to manage with only nine member states and a broad approach to free trade within its own boundaries, but with three times as many members and a deluded and detached homogenising agenda being pushed from above no amount of constitutional fiddling is going to resolve its inherent contradictions.

It is the deep fried mars bar of politics, a strangely appealing concoction when under the influence, but destined to deliver a coronary failure at some point in the future.

There, I think I’ve mixed enough metaphors for today.