What started in the 1950s as a six-country grouping bound by reformed trade rules is now a 27-member bureaucracy  Over the next two weeks, Telegraph writers and contributors will examine whether the EU works, what Britain gets out of it and what sort of a relationship we want with the peoples and cultures of Europe.  Adrian Michaels begins by assessing the EU’s health and worth as its 27 members combat recession and square up to the might of China and the US .  When it comes to thinking about the European Union, compare what a Briton could have done on a whim one September morning in 1949 with what might seize your fancy 60 years later.  However much you may dislike budget airlines, you can, for the cost of an inexpensive dinner, head out instantly to Tallinn, or Faro, or Krakow or any one of dozens of European cities. You don’t need to wait days or weeks while applying for a visa. If you have some euros left over and travel to the 16-country eurozone, you won’t have to organise currency exchanges. And if Aarhus, or Bucharest, or Dortmund takes your fancy, you can settle down and start working. Or buy a house. Or fall in love. You can move, with relatively little difficulty, from one country at peace to another, from the shores of the Atlantic to the upper reaches of the Baltic and out to the Black Sea. Technological and amorous advances aside, all this has been made possible by the grand European integration project, formed out of the smoking ruins of the most devastating war in our history. It probably exceeds the wildest dreams of its founders.  The EU, which we use today as shorthand for the union and its predecessor incarnations, has its critics. What started in the 1950s as a six-country grouping bound by reformed trade rules is now accused by many of being an interfering 27-member bureaucracy led by an elite that is out of touch with the wishes of millions of Europeans.  Unemployment is climbing steeply and growth has stumbled badly. There is a crisis in the market capitalism that has been championed by the EU for decades. Ageing populations are leading us towards disaster in our tax and social security systems, and there is growing resentment of an accumulation of powers in Brussels, of further enlargement and immigration.  People are asking what being "European" means, and what the EU should stand for in a global system increasingly influenced by the newly powerful, such as China and India.  For much of its history, those have been easy questions to answer. The EU stood for peace and prosperity. Dismantled trade restrictions and freedom of movement have vastly increased economic activity and wellbeing; and the countries of western Europe have not been at war with each other for decades, meaning the EU must be judged to have succeeded in its most important task.  In 1943, Jean Monnet, the French statesman with the greatest claim to be the EU’s founding father, declared, in the midst of war: "There will be no peace in Europe if the states rebuild themselves on the basis of national sovereignty, with its implications of prestige politics and economic protection ... The countries of Europe are not strong enough individually to be able to guarantee prosperity and social development for their peoples…[They] must therefore form a federation or a European entity that would make them into a common economic unit."  And so it has come to pass, up to a point, though it has not meant peace throughout Europe. Conflict has raged in the Balkans and the countries of central and eastern Europe have not been calm until relatively recently. Georgia and Russia went to war, briefly, only last year.  But peace in the West is itself very rare. Timothy Garton Ash, professor of European studies at Oxford University, says it is "unique. Without precedent. So long as there’s been a Europe there’s been fighting."  Some argue that peace has been more a result of the existence of the Nato military alliance, which came into being in 1949. But the point is impossible to prove, as neither Nato nor the EU has existed without the other. Supporters of the EU point out that Brussels has given us – in Mr Garton Ash’s words - "a massive conflict resolution mechanism". In spite of the terrible failure to prevent conflict just outside its borders, in places such as Kosovo, war is virtually unthinkable between EU member states; the principle is established that we sort out our divisions, often at tedious length, around a table.  This is potentially a great selling point for the EU as the world grapples with the big multilateral issues of our day such as climate change and nuclear proliferation. Mario Monti, a former European commissioner, now president of Milan’s Bocconi University, says the EU’s founders might be disappointed at the lack of political union that has so far been forged between members.  "On the other hand," he says, "the recipe put in place by the founding fathers has proven prophetic as the world moves to globalisation. The Monnet method of co-ordinated governance is really the name of the game in the world now."  José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, who hopes to be reappointed shortly by members of the European Parliament, writes in his recent manifesto: "The European Union has had almost 60 years as a laboratory for cross-border supranational co-operation, making it a natural champion of global governance."  He says that we feel every day the EU’s experience and quiet diplomacy. His office has, for example, been writing, unheralded, large parts of the communiqués and agreements associated with G20 summits.  But inventing a system isn’t the same as running it. England gave football and cricket to the rest of the world, but it still gets beaten regularly at both. And there are plenty of countries such as China and Russia who do not in any case subscribe to a continuous global pow-wow.  "In a world of giants, we need the scale that only the EU brings," says Mr Garton Ash. But, he adds: "I see little evidence that the rest of the world is moving towards a series of versions of the European Union. There is limited co-operation…and great big nation states who regard postmodern shared sovereignty as anachronistic."  The Brussels co-operative can look wasteful, argumentative and slow. And when China and the US hold bilateral summits, they underline that the EU seems to be losing importance, an odd position for 27 countries that together bind 500 million people in the world’s largest economy.  Membership of the euro has probably saved some countries such as Ireland from bankruptcy, but Europe’s countries have nonetheless been hammered in the global downturn. Unemployment in Spain is heading for 20 per cent. The Latvian economy has been shrinking at an annualised rate of 19 per cent. Meanwhile, it seems for now that many other countries such as the US will emerge from economic crisis faster, and more robustly, than the EU 27.  Bruegel, the respected Brussels-based think-tank, suggested recently: "There is now a distinct possibility that this crisis will be remembered as the occasion when Europe irretrievably lost ground, both economically and politically.  "Economically, there is a risk that…the crisis will result in a spiral of near-stagnation, rising public debt and declining innovation performance. Politically, the European Union is at risk of being blamed for having fostered a liberalisation agenda in the past rather than being praised for having promoted a co-ordinated response to the crisis when it struck."  Millions of Europeans clearly have little interest or faith in what is happening in Brussels. Turnout for the European parliamentary elections this year was a woeful record low of 43 per cent. That represents a failure as much for Eurosceptics, who have failed to raise a significant dissenting vote, as for Europhiles.  Matters may have been different in the years after the Second World War, but many in Europe have lost the appetite for bold, integrating initiatives. Instead, they are aghast at a Brussels elite they think is spending taxes without accountability and taking the EU in a centralised, federal direction that they have not approved. That is a feeling that in Britain really started to take root with the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, the single currency and the Commission presidency of Jacques Delors, he of the thoroughly rude headlines in The Sun.  Yet the EU’s budget is small, just 1 per cent of the combined gross wealth of the countries in the union. And there have been sensible reforms in recent years of such deserved targets as the Common Agricultural Policy. The EU says its court of auditors gave the 2007 books a "completely clean bill of health" for the first time.  Multilateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund or World Trade Organisation are in any case not built with the mass approval of millions of people. Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, a think-tank, says: "I don’t think European integration has ever been driven by the will of the people…. Sceptics are right to say it is driven by elites, but the EU is not built in contradiction to the wishes of the people." And, he adds: "The EU is not as unpopular in other countries as it is in Britain."  While Britons often see Brussels as a hyper-regulated impediment to free markets, others in Europe view it as the opposite – a dismantler of trade barriers and a thorn in the side of protectionist governments.  The economic crisis saw the authority of Brussels seriously weakened as governments took unilateral action to save their countries’ banks, car companies and jobs. Now, with deficits at record levels, the stability pacts that have kept budgetary discipline relatively tight in the eurozone are in disarray. Brussels will also have to move stridently to reimpose its right to set competition policy in a new era of vastly increased state intervention and ownership.  This is the biggest challenge for some. Mr Monti says: "The crisis has delegitimised the market economy [because some elements of capitalism have lost credibility in many countries]. There must be a new deal on how to integrate social policies without violating single market rules."  In spite of these potentially fatal injuries, countries outside the EU are still anxious to join, presumably because they see the prosperity it has conferred on members in better times. Over the next few years we could see an EU that includes Turkey, Iceland, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine, and a eurozone that will steadily increase in size.  The EU long ago realised that its structures and rules on decision-making would have to change to reflect its great size. It is now near to implementing the Lisbon Treaty – the latest of many revamps since the Treaties of Rome in 1957.  Its defenders say that Lisbon could lead to a big improvement in the way the EU is represented on global issues, and its provisions may enhance the legitimacy and accountability of the EU’s institutions. But critics see it as taking the EU further down a centralised road at precisely the moment when a furious and real debate is raging about whether we are better together or apart.  In the UK, the Labour government has been attacked for supporting Lisbon. Its critics – some forever fearful that Brussels is a conspiracy run counter to Albion’s interests by an alliance of French and German federalists – say it is giving the country a written constitution by the backdoor.  Lisbon will probably go through if the Irish reverse an earlier rejection of it in a referendum next month. That, too, gives sceptics cause to tear out their hair. The Irish have already voted no. How can it be that they just keep voting until Brussels has the answer it wants?  For its supporters, Lisbon goes some way towards addressing the complaints of sceptics. It grants more legislative power to the EU’s parliament, which may help its distant members to connect with voters.  Crucially, the treaty puts in place someone who may be considered a European president as well as a powerful European foreign minister, and a diplomatic service. It ends the crazy carousel of the six-month rotating presidency. When the EU sits down to talk with India or China or the US, it will no longer have to start building relationships from scratch every six months because the French have given way to the Czechs, who have given way to the Swedes.  The Conservative Party, which seems likely to win the next general election, houses a considerable group of sceptics who have pledged to fight Lisbon given the chance. This is of immense importance to the EU’s future, but as the party moves towards its conference – only three days after the Irish vote – it is still giving confused signals about whether it, too, will order a referendum on Europe.  Communication is also arguably Brussels’ biggest failing. If the union is to survive and prosper this century, it needs to find an inspiring message in the manner of Winston Churchill’s speech in Zurich in 1946: "The structure of the United States of Europe, if well and truly built, will be such as to make the material strength of a single state less important. Small nations will count as much as large ones and gain their honour by their contribution to the common cause."  Belief in that common cause is wavering in important places. For the Conservative Party, the Irish in their referendum and everyone else, the question is how the interests of Europe’s small nations will be best served in Mr Garton Ash’s "world of giants".  "In terms of European history," he says, "this is the best Europe we’ve ever had. It’s an extraordinary achievement. The challenge is to defend our own interests in a world increasingly dominated by non-western powers."
The nature of British sovereignty will be altered if the new structure and    powers of the European Union are approved next month by an Irish referendum    on the Lisbon Treaty.