Written in March 2007: The fiftieth anniversary of the Treaty of Rome on March 25th was a day of celebration. The entity created by the treaty, the European Economic Community (now the European Union), has endured for half a century. What started as an undertaking of “the Six” (France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Belgium and Luxembourg) now has 27 members. So deeply embedded is it in Europe’s collective consciousness that it is hard to imagine that the EU will not still be here when the time comes for its centennial.