Mr Bush will delight Euro-philes by giving the European Union the strongest blessing it has ever received from the Oval Office. He will say that he supports a strong Europe because “we need a strong partner in the hard work of advancing freedom in the world”.
The line will be interpreted in Brussels as a presidential blessing for the European project at a time when the EU is forging ahead with a common foreign policy. At the start of his first term Mr Bush talked of a Europe that was “whole, free and at peace”, but he avoided commenting on the Continent’s political integration.
On the first foreign trip of his second term Mr Bush is sending a different signal that will alarm Eurosceptics. Tomorrow he will become the first US President to visit the European Commission after separately meeting the EU’s 25 leaders.
This neither surprises nor disapoints me, as the president is intent on recreating the EU on this side of the Atlantic. What started out as NAFTA and has transformed into the Free Trade Area of the Americas will be called the American Union within 40 years. And both Unions will be about as free as their Soviet predecessor.