Timothy Garton Ash gets a little confused in the Guardian today. He is, as always, telling us that we have to let go of Atlanticism, cosy up to the EU and make it a world power, a counterweight to the US:

It’s interesting that one of the very few occasions on which the Blair government has publicly criticised the Bush administration is over US steel tariffs. And the tariffs were withdrawn. Why? Because the EU went to the World Trade Organisation and threatened counter- measures. Economically, the EU is a superpower. Power respects power.

Um, no, the EU did not “go to the WTO and threaten counter-measures”. Various people complained that the steel tariffs were, under the WTO rules that the US had signed, illegal. Whether the EU was one of the complainers was irrelevant. On trade matters there is no reason whatsoever for the EU to band together: the WTO is already the legal structure under which it all happens. If the EU did not exist, the decision about steel would have been the same.
Consider the Brazilian case against US agricultural subsidies. The EU was on the US side as they were worried about the effect on CAP. The Brazilians won, because the law is the law, and where the EU decides its interest is is a trivial facter.