The gracelessness with which EU leaders greeted their new partners in central and south Europe after last year's enlargement very much set the tone for this. It was "the Polish plumber" who became the folkloric anti-hero of these referendums, not his Turkish counterpart. Yet the successive enlargements since 1973 (five and a half including Germany's unification) have demonstrated an incomparable ability to spread stability and prosperity. Not only did they sweep away the residue of fascist dictatorships in south Europe and communist regimes in east Europe, they enriched the EU as a whole, often in very tangible ways. It is an astounding abdication of responsibility for European leaders not to have sold the Union's most successful policy in a way that highlights this self-interest.
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