The European Union is a strange beast. In fact, it is different from anything the world has ever seen before. For one thing, it is made up fifteen different sized, one-headed creatures. 

Here's where it gets even stranger: Every six months, this beast rotates one of its fifteen little heads to be its leader. At the end of the six months, all of the beast's fifteen little heads merge together into one big head at what it calls a summit. At this summit, the big head approves, or disapprove, what the prior little head accomplished. And, the big head decides what the next little leader head should try to accomplish during its term.

Recently, the fifteen little heads merged and the beast had its six-month summit. What did the big head decide? For one thing, it decided to absorb ten more little one-headed creatures into its body. This means, soon the strange looking EU beast will look even stranger. It will become a huge monster made up of twenty-five different sized creatures and, if things stay as they are, it will have twenty-five rotating heads instead of fifteen.

Even the beast, however, is beginning to realize just how impractical twenty-five rotating heads would be -- not to mention how ridiculous it would look. But, the beast has a problem. All twenty-five of the little creatures naturally want their head to have a turn at being the leader head of the beast.

And, the EU beast has something else to worry about -- defense. At the present, it only has ten horns available to defend itself. To make matters worse, these ten horns are on ten of its little heads. And these ten, one-horned heads don't want the other hornless little heads telling them what to do. In other words, the ten heads with horns think they should have a greater say over the beast than the other little heads they're being asked to defend.

To make matters worse for the EU beast, the ten one-horned heads formed an alliance and chose a leader for themselves -- you could say a little horn, different from the others (it doesn't have a head), but a horn never-the-less.

How is the EU beast planning on resolving its problem of too many heads without offending any of its heads? It has taken many little pieces of itself and formed them into what looks like another creature -- called a Convention -- and told the little heads the Convention will decide what should be done about the rotating head problem.

Of course, since the beast made it from its own body, the Convention is not really a different creature. But, until the EU beast decides what to do about its rotating heads, the Convention keeps the little heads busy and happy.

So, at the summit, the big head instructed its Convention creature to finish its work and deliver its decision about how to best resolve the rotating head problem to the next summit six months away. At that time, the big head will tell the little heads how many heads will be allowed to lead the new, enlarged EU beast.

And, there is still one more thing the big head did at this summit. To the delight of the EU beast -- with the help of the little horn -- its ten horns have finally begun to grow into their full maturity. As a result, for the first time at a summit, the big head was able to give the order that would authorize the use of the EU beast's horns.

Naturally, the EU beast has learned to like its little horn.