Europe

Quick march! Who says?

The European Union's arguments over what to do in Albania have revived doubts about whether it can ever build a genuine foreign policy

|APELDOORN

IT WAS not the first time that Europe's foreign ministers had seen their tidy agenda blown away. The plan of the EU's Dutch presidency was that the informal gathering in William of Orange's palace of Het Loo, outside Apeldoorn, on March 15th-16th was for a thorough discussion about the Union's plan to take in new members. But as soon as they had arrived, the ministers were swamped with demands to “do something” about the anarchy in Albania. And what they did, in the end, was pretty little.

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “Quick march! Who says?”

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