Famously described as "semi-detached" from Europe, Britain is feting this week's 50th anniversary of the EU's founding treaty in low-key style, as the capital of a growing eurosceptic zone.
Prime Minister Tony Blair will attend glamour celebrations in Berlin on Sunday to celebrate the 1957 Treaty of Rome, the cornerstone of today's EU. But he will be keenly aware that British doubts are now shared by many other leaders, including from the EU's new members in eastern Europe.
And as Blair prepares to leave office later this year, there are few signs that his island nation will fundamentally change its attitude to the 27-country club anytime soon, particularly under his expected successor, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown.
Brown is notorious in Brussels for lecturing his EU counterparts on the benefits of free-market economic policy, and of leaving EU meetings early through boredom or frustration.
"It's no secret that the EU is not exactly close to the heart of Gordon Brown," said Marco Incerti of the Brussels-based Centre for European Studies (CEPS) a think tank.
Britain has had a fractious relationship with its European allies ever since France initially vetoed British entry to the then European Economic Community in 1963. Britain eventually joined a decade later.
Over the years Britain's exasperation has focused generally on protectionism, and notably on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the bloc's long-disputed aid system which benefits French farmers in particular.
EU 50th Anniversary of the Treaty of Rome website
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