By euro-apparatchik, I don't simply mean someone who is directly on the EU's payroll. One of the more ingenious tactics pursued by integrationists over the years has been to build up a corpus of fellow travellers within the member states. Thus, for example, most European universities employ "Jean Monnet Professors", who can be relied upon to push the Brussels line without regard for academic neutrality. Virtually every local authority over a certain size employs one or more "Europe officers", their wages paid by local ratepayers, but their livelihoods wholly dependent on the EU. Every charity over a certain size does the same thing, as does every large corporation and every lobby group.

A couple of years ago, the EU held a two-day conference in Brussels for "representatives of civil society". Around 500 people turned up, representing bodies ranging from the European Cyclists' Federation to the European Women's Lobby. Their recommendations were unanimous: what "civil society" wanted, they said, was for the EU massively to extend its jurisdiction. Intrigued, I put down a parliamentary question asking how many of the groups represented received grants from the EU. Eventually the answer came back: all of them.

The sums involved can be huge. Christian Aid, for example, has had €27,109,352.12 from the EU over the past four years. Small wonder that it campaigns for Brussels to agglomerate more powers under the guise of fighting climate change. When David Miliband cited Oxfam as a supporter of the European Constitution, he didn't mention that it had been given €37,449,517.55 by the European Commission that year alone. Remember that the next time one of these mega-charities-cum-lobbyists asks you for cash.

Here is where the EU's strength rests. Not among the benign cranks of the European Movement or the Union of European Federalists, but in the legions of EU-funded consultants, contractors, seconded civil servants, big landowners and NGOs. They are the nomenklatura of our age.

One has to be careful in using such words, of course. The EU is not the Soviet Union. It doesn't take away our passports or throw us into gulags and, while it doesn't pretend to be democratic in its own structures, it rests ultimately upon the consent of 27 democratic nations.