There is a clear divide between the ambitious objectives of the financial perspectives 2007-2013 (relaunch of European construction, including central and eastern Europe in the Community economic fabric, new orientations for innovation and research, and so on) and the limited and, on first sight, petty-minded debates within the European Council. José Manuel Barroso recently used an English saying to describe the situation: "you can like haggis without necessarily wanting to see how it is...