The man who wants absolute power

1st July 2006
By Gordon MacKerron

Energy is an oddity in the field of European policymaking. For some years now, and not only in the UK, national resistance to Brussels has been growing. Politicians win votes by standing up to the steamroller of Europe rather than by advocating closer ties and more integration. The rejection of the proposed European constitution in such unlikely places as France was only a stark symbol of much wider tendencies.

Yet the European Commission can plausibly argue — as in its ener…