New Year’s Eve brought an unusual self-induced bit of boredom. I had nowhere to go, and no desire, either. But instead of moping, I used the quiet around the house to uncover the simple fun of the WAP feature on my mobile phone—and the ability to connect with Latvia while away from a computer.

For those who don’t know, WAP stands for Wireless Application Protocol. It’s a telecommunications standard that allows properly equipped mobile phones to connect to the Internet. Just like Web sites, WAP sites provide news, information, entertainment and e-commerce. But unlike Web sites, what the user usually sees on the small screen of the mobile phone is short bursts of text and few, if any, graphics.

For some readers, particularly those in Europe, the use of WAP is nothing new. In fact, some mobile telecommunications providers have already moved beyond the simple text-based information provided by basic WAP. Eurotel Bratislava, a mobile communications provider in the Slovak Republic, recently unveiled what it says is the first live video feed to a cell phone, using Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) to send a television news show to its customers.

But that’s way ahead of my phone’s capabilities.

I’d known that my Ericsson R520m could utilize WAP, but I had never tried. In fact, I wasn’t even sure that I could. However, my provider (T-Mobile) clarified that my calling plan includes up to 1 megabyte of data transmissions per month. In the world of WAP, that’s plenty for infrequent use.

After spending half an hour on the Web tracking down information about how to configure my phone to use my provider’s WAP “gateway,” I was set. Within minutes, I was surfing T-Mobile’s site, retrieving generally useless information such as my horoscope and the winning lottery numbers.

Not satisfied with things I can’t control anyway, I began to wonder whether there are any WAP sites in Latvia and whether I might be able to view them on my phone. And, yes, there are some sites in Latvia, and yes, some I could get to through my phone.

My first visit was to Diena, the largest daily newspaper in Latvia. I was pleased to see that my phone readily gained access to the site, even displaying the newspaper’s logotype. The home page of the site allowed two basic choices: today’s and yesterday’s top stories and sports results. Scrolling and “clicking” (by pressing the “Yes” button), I was able to read headlines and the stories behind them.

Cool! This means I can be away from my computer and still read Latvian news on the Internet.

But why stop there? My next visit was to Latvijas Mobīlais telefons (LMT), the larger of the two wireless providers in Latvia. LMT’s WAP portal offers a number of links, but many of them are not Latvian and several didn’t work. However, a fun feature allows a mobile phone user to find out what movies are playing in cinemas around Riga and the rest of the country. The database also provides summaries of the cast and plot. Doubly cool!

My wireless provider when I’m in Latvia, Tele2, also has a WAP site, but its offerings are not as broad as LMT’s—although they are provided in Latvian, English and Russian.

Another stop on my WAP trip to Latvia was at 118, the information service provided by Lattelekom. The horoscope section didn’t work, but at least I could find out the phone numbers for special services in cities around Latvia—in case I need to call the fire department in Saldus, for example. The site also provides a name’s day service for today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, and the day after the day after tomorrow (why isn’t there a good word in English like aizparīt?).

These aren’t the only WAP sites in Latvia, but I was surprised that more aren’t available, especially useful ones. The Estonian business newspaper Aripaev, a cousin of Rīga’s Dienas bizness, has a WAP site, but Db doesn’t. Plus I found an interesting English-Estonian WAP dictionary, but nothing like that for Latvian.

The future of WAP is unclear. Two years ago, it was deemed a technology that would slowly catch on, but it seems that it still hasn’t. Surfing the Internet on a screen barely larger than your thumb is one barrier.

But at least it gave me something to do New Year’s Eve.

The euphoria of being invited to join the NATO defense alliance has barely abated, and now an equally significant moment for Latvia has been reached at the European Union summit in Copenhagen, during which the three Baltic states were among 10 countries invited to join the EU.

As with the NATO decision, the final days before the Dec. 12-13 summit saw various rumours of delay, possible treachery and unresolved differences. Denmark currently holds the presidency of the Council of the European Union and engaged in a furious shuttle diplomacy to bed down arrangements and ensure a smooth outcome.

And what are the bones of contention?

Milk, meat, fruit, grains, nuts—not to forget potatoes… and tomatoes. Europe, which considers itself the most sophisticated of unions, the paragon of peaceful coexistence and no doubt the pinnacle of western civilisation, is constantly embroiled in disputes over its most ancient area of production—agriculture. And the potential expansion only exacerbates already bitter conflicts.

Besides the three Baltic states, the candidate countries are Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. For all of them the prospect of joining the EU has essentially two quite contradictory faces.

On the positive front, there is the lure of Europe’s wealth: access to a huge market to which candidate countries have had only limited access up to now. For hard-pressed farmers there is the promise of subsidies. For politicians and bureaucrats, not insignificantly, there is the prospect of gaining glittering (or at least highly paid) careers in Brussels, in the European Parliament or the many other branches of the EU bureaucratic Babylon—a significant reason why so many prominent politicians are enthusiastically in favour of joining Europe. And beyond all this, for the Eastern European countries as well, there is something more symbolic but equally tangible: the feeling of having “rejoined Europe,” of being recognised as a part of Europe’s own cultural heritage after half a century or more of isolation from it.

But that is only one side of the story. The notion of joining the EU has always been controversial, for membership also implies abiding by its rules and norms on a whole plethora of issues. The EU’s farm subsidies are famous (or infamous), but they come together with a determined effort to reduce the agricultural sector in terms of employment and even in some cases production, rationalising industries and forcing many farmers to quit the land. Industries as prominent as the Danish dairy industry now only have a fraction of the farmers they had a few decades ago, and this tinier fraction can now through efficiencies produce just as much as in the past. Internal quotas limit the amount each country is allowed to produce. And the battles with French and Italian wine and vegetable growers are regularly on the front page as opposition to rationalisation grows, resembling more skirmishes from the Thirty Years’ War than orderly and civilised decision-making.

There is little chance these scenes will not be repeated in, say, the huge Polish agricultural sector. Latvia has had to fight hard to get acceptable quotas for its own milk, meat and vegetable production, and many small producers fear they will have no chance to make a living when asked to compete with huge Euro agribusinesses.

As all candidate countries will hold referenda on the desirability of joining the EU, the mix of positives and negatives make predicting referenda outcomes difficult. The latest polls in Latvia suggest a knife-edge of around 50 percent in favour of joining.

And there is more. Joining the EU means abiding by all sorts of other rules—on budgetary deficits, on borrowing and lending, on privatisation and restructuring on freedom of movement of people, as well as steady pressure for all countries to adopt the Euro currency. In all this, there are pluses and minuses for Latvia. One aspect that the EU negotiations have picked on is the need to rid Latvian institutions of corruption and introduce a more transparent and modern judicial system. Latvia will need to work hard on these aspects to have appropriate institutional design by May 2004, when the candidate countries are expected to become full-fledged members of the EU.

For Latvia and Estonia particularly there was another, more poignant issue in the process of getting invitations from NATO and the EU. For nearly a decade now, the two countries have had to endure sustained European pressure to change various aspects of their citizenship or language laws. In a bizarre process, mainly Russian objections to these laws have been taken up by European institutions, which in turn have pressed Estonia and Latvia. The series of negotiations, conflicts, retreats and compromises has been a lesson in the pressures that can be exerted on countries even by supposedly “friendly” powers.

This complicated set of positive and negative aspects of the EU means that after Copenhagen, the next two years will see an increasing level of exhaustion and not a little bitterness as countries struggle to meet an evolving set of demands on their institutions and economies to be deemed worthy of membership. And final accession may also be viewed from quite varied perspectives. For some, it will be welcome back to Europe. For others, it will be farewell to a brief sovereignty. For many, it will be welcome to the daily potato politics of the EU.