EUROPEAN DIARY:WHEN FORMER US secretary of state Henry Kissinger famously remarked, "When I need to pick up the phone and call Europe, what's the number?", it reflected the frustration felt about the complexity of doing business with a Europe dominated by nation states.
But over the past 30 years, successive European treaties have shifted more power to the EU institutions based in Brussels and in the process, have provided a single port of call for US officials eager to ink US-EU agreements in a range of sectors.
Last year European transport commissioner Jacques Barrot was the point man who brokered an open skies deal that allows airlines to fly to any airport in both regions from next month. Trade commissioner Peter Mandelson, meanwhile, has been negotiating with the US for a World Trade Organisation deal to liberalise world trade.
By empowering a single negotiator to take part in global talks, the European Union can present a united front and a more coherent negotiating position in talks than would be possible if states tried to broker 27 different deals. The so-called "community method" also provides other world powers such as the US with a single telephone number to call to get things done: something Kissinger felt was necessary for Europe to be relevant.
Yet events over the past week have proven that, on issues related to security and migration, the US often prefers to negotiate with individual states rather than embrace a united union.
At an EU-US ministerial meeting in Slovenia last week, US homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff told EU officials bluntly that the US would negotiate visa- waiver deals with individual EU states rather than through the European Commission.
He made his comments after the US signed memorandums of understanding with the Czech Republic, Estonia and Latvia, which should lead to bilateral deals this year that will allow tourists and business travellers from these countries to travel to the US without a visa.
Visa-free travel to the US is already enjoyed by citizens from 15 EU states - which include Slovenia and all the old EU member states that joined the union before 2004, except Greece. Citizens from the 12 remaining EU states must still apply to their local US embassy and pay for visas when they plan to take a holiday in the US, visit a relative or go on a business trip.
This is a source of tension among Washington's key central European allies. After all, if Polish troops can fight side by side with US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, why shouldn't their citizens be able to travel easily to the US?
The US says the new EU states have too high a refusal rate for visas and their citizens pose too much of a risk of overstaying their visas and becoming illegal immigrants.
The US has also been updating its rules to provide greater border security in the wake of the September 11th, 2001, terrorist attacks and wants to have new systems recording people coming into and out of the US in place before allowing new countries on to its visa-waiver programme.
Both these factors have combined to prevent the commission, which has jurisdiction in the field of visa reciprocity for EU states in the Schengen zone, from persuading the US to lift its visa restrictions on new EU states. Tired at the delay, the Czechs, Estonians and Latvians have signed memorandums of understanding with the US to negotiate bilateral visa deals. Lithuania, Slovakia and Hungary will also sign memorandums this week.
"The bloc [ EU] was stalling for three years and was only making promises of starting talks. The Americans, on the other hand, sought agreement from the very beginning," said Oskaras Jusys, secretary of foreign affairs in Lithuania.
However the decision to go it alone has caused consternation among some old EU states and the commission, which has accused them of undermining EU solidarity. A confidential commission memorandum sent to the member states threatened legal action if they broke rank on the issue. It also attacked US policy, saying it disregarded "community prerogatives and the close constructive working relationship that the EU and the US have established since September 11th".
Commission officials fear that the US will demand additional concessions from individual states regarding access to EU citizens' data. For example, the Czech Republic has access to the Schengen Information System - a database that collects information on people travelling into and out of the EU - and could conceivably be asked by the US to provide it with some of this data in its ongoing fight against terrorism.
Old member states also fear that if the community method is abandoned for visas then it won't be long before EU states begin to sign their own bilateral deals in sensitive fields such as energy, disregarding wider security concerns.
The new EU states bristle at the criticism, arguing that they have legal advice that signing bilateral deals does not breach European law. In any case, they have a duty to their citizens given that the commission has failed to deliver a visa deal with the US.
Both sides in the dispute called a truce last week and agreed to ask the council's legal service to provide its own opinion on the issue. However the issue has not gone away and threatens to open a rift between old and new member states.