A few things have dropped into my inbox today which, as well as being interesting for other reasons, have been illuminating practical examples of how European Union can be an effective route for the 27 countries which comprise it, maximising their influence over important national interests, by working together through it.

The first is a report from the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), which launches itself in Berlin tomorrow, about relations between the EU and Russia. The report, it seems (I’m afraid I’ve only read the summary) makes the case that the EU and some of its member states in particular, are much too afraid of the resurgent Putin’s Russia. I should think it’s possible to overstate this case, but certainly the energy issue in particular does seem to have got the EU worried, and Joschka Fischer (the former leader of the German Greens and Foreign Minister, whose memoirs I understand have been causing a stir in Berlin political circles this autumn) says that it is Russia which dictates the terms of EU-Russia dialogue at present.

The report highlights the fact that in recent years Russia has had 11 significant bilateral disputes with individual European countries, and says that if EU countries simply acted together rather than separately in their dealing with Moscow, they would carry a lot more weight.

I think this is a good example of some aspects of this theory. For one of the responses that those opposed to the EU tend to come back with, is to point out that while this may be true, surely the 27 countries concerned could simply achieve this just by agreeing with each other, and they don’t need all the mechanisms of the EU, and everything else that implies, to do so.

But in fact this simply isn’t true: it is precisely the fact that the EU is a meaningful bloc, with integrated arrangements covering everything from trade to free movement of labour, that potentially allows it to negotiate from a position of strength. As Mark Leonard, ECFR Executive Director says, “the EU’s combined economy is 15 times the size of Russia’s, its military budget is seven times higher, and its population three times the size of Russia. If European countries unite around a common strategy, they will realise how powerful they really are.”

For the countries that are involved in these disputes, the ability to act together could make a profound difference to their own national interests, in conflicts ranging from trade disputes with the Netherlands, to meat disputes with Poland, to the Litvinenko affair with the UK - and indeed the efforts that Russia has put into ensuring the rest of the EU doesn’t come in behind the UK on that issue, shows just how keen their appreciation of the potential power of an integrated EU is.

The ECFR, by the way, sounds like an interesting and useful new development. It is funded by George Soros and one of the other emails to arrive in my inbox today was an announcement that Andrew Duff, Lib Dem MEP for the East of England and Leader of the 12 UK Lib Dem MEPs, as well as a man described by Giscard d’Estaing as ”˜the Socrates of European integration’, is one of the founding patrons of it.

So this was interesting case study of shared sovereignty meaning enhanced sovereignty. In many ways it’s a harsh old world out there in this twenty-first century of ours, and the UK (and every other country) will need every friend and ally we can get to help protect and promote our national interests during it.

The second issue to make the same point to me today was a note from the Liberal Democrat Group in the European Parliament about their efforts to use the power of the combined EU to exert pressure to oppose censorship on the internet within countries which have difficulty with this concept. There are apparently legislative moves within the USA towards a Global Online Freedom Act to help try and achieve this aim, and ALDE MEPs (the Group within which UK Lib Dem MEPs sit) have been arguing for the EU to make similar moves. A hearing they organised today heard from dissidents in some states such as China and Tunisia about the impact that freedom of speech on the internet can have. As Dutch Liberal Democrat (VVD) MEP Jules Maaten says “Countries such as China and Cuba, Burma and Belarus are placing tighter restrictions on the use of the Internet to prevent freedom of expression. For example Yahoo and Google have, in China, given in to pressure to hand over information on their clients and stirred up a hornets’ nest. European firms face the same issues, examples being Telecom Italia in Cuba and Wanadoo - which belongs to France Telecom - in Tunisia. It is intolerable that Western businesses should be helping repressive governments to trample human rights underfoot.”

Again, individual European countries may be able to achieve little, but working together through the major trading bloc which the EU is, and in particular when it works together with the other dominant force within the WTO, the USA, European countries have a much greater chance of being able to make a difference.

It was good to be reminded through a couple of practical examples of how this sharing sovereignty business can be quite helpful to the national interests of the UK and other European countries.