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		Give a dog a bad name January 13 2003 There is a fashion these days for companies to re-brand themselves - a practice which I personally find very irritating, as I can never remember what the new name represents. Who on earth are Accenture, or Lucent Technologies, or Consignia? And how long will they last? Generally I am opposed to organisational name changes. At best they are confusing, at worst they represent a desperate attempt to draw a line under failure. Few things made me happier than the Russian decision to drop the name Leningrad and re-adopt Saint Petersburg. And wouldn't it be nice if Harare reverted to Salisbury? So it is interesting that ex-French president Giscard d'Estaing, in his new incarnation as President of the so-called Convention on the Future of Europe, has decided that the changes to be enshrined in his new Constitution (although it is not finally drafted, never mind agreed, yet) are so far-reaching that a new name is required for the entity formerly known as the EU. We had the European Coal and Steel Community, the Common Market, the European Economic Community, the European Communities, and then the European Union, each stage representing a new, deeper level of integration. As the European Journal covered with great detail and clarity in its December issue, the new Convention will almost certainly take integration past the point of no return, creating in effect, if not in name, a unitary state of Europe. One wonders whether each change of name was designed to blur the memory of previous failure. Certainly current opinion research indicates that the EU is unloved. Indeed one of the stated objectives of the Convention was to bridge the democratic deficit and engage the people in the project - an objective that was rapidly forgotten. So Giscard has made a number of suggestions, including "The United States of Europe" - a name which is unlikely to commend itself to readers of the EJ, although it clearly signals the direction of the Convention's thinking. And he invited a public debate on the question. So after careful thought, I came up with a proposal which I think fits the bill. How about "The People's Republic of Europe"? As I wrote to Giscard, this would reflect both the European élites' ambition to create a unitary super-state, and also the emerging parallels between the new Europe and the old USSR - the passion for central planning and control, the overbearing institutuions, the prescriptive and intrusive regulation, the endemic fraud and mismanagement, and above all, the increasing lack of democratic accountability. There is one other aspect that attracts me to this name. British Conservative MEPs are, for the moment, at any rate, associate members of the EPP (European People's Party) group in the European parliament. Surely my proposal, The People's Republic of Europe, would have a special resonance for the European People's Party? Surely they would be flattered and delighted by it? I have copied my suggestion to the distinguished and portly German MEP Elmar Brok, who chairs the EPP delegation on the Convention. So far, neither Brok nor Giscard has replied. But I will keep you posted.