Before I forget, I would like to give a plug for a very interesting book, The Institutions of the Enlarged European Union, Continuity and Change, edited by Edward Best, Thomas Christiansen and Pierpaolo Settembri, and not just because I have given a puff on the back of the book. The authors carried out a pretty rigorous analysis of the way the different EU institutions have adapted to enlargement. The study is timely and, in my humble opinion, provides much food for thought for European policy makers. For what the authors seem to have discovered, almost without exception, is a dangerous coupling of twin tendencies – dangerous, that is, from a democratic point of view. On the one hand, formal decision-making bodies within the institutions are enlarged to continue to provide representation for all of the member states (as an illustration of this trend, one has only to look at the current debate about the European Commission’s composition). At the same time, and to compensate for the sheer size of such bodies, informal mechanisms have evolved to facilitate the decision-making process. In other words, efficiency is gained, but at the expense of transparency. It’s a huge conundrum, especially given that we know both trends are set to continue.