Not that the Conservative party's bad karma of continual reincarnation had much to do with my decision to go for the job when first it was advertised. To begin with my thinking was pretty hard-headed, in that I fancied a change, knew my wife and children were restless, and thought it was a quite interesting time to cover Europe. This was just before the British general election and there was speculation that either the French or Dutch referendums might produce a “no”. It was an odd time to research and read for a new job, in the heat of an election campaign, but I think the feverish adrenalin-driven nature of a political correspondent's job helped at that time rather than hindered.

I pride myself that my track is nearly always written by the time the tape editor is ready for it, but during the election there were a few times when I was caught out, reading an obscure article on a Polish radio website, or sketching out a piece on Italy's economic problems, when I should have had the lip mike up to my face and been burbling about the day's doings of Messrs Blair, Howard and Kennedy.

But I was pretty soon clear about a couple of things. I'd got the bug. I desperately wanted the job, because for me Europe was one of the most fascinating stories around and it was easier to tell it now than at just about any time in the past. Late at night, having returned from Westminster and after my habitual late supper, I should have gone straight to bed to be ready for the next day's fray. But often I found myself pacing my kitchen, clutching a glass of cheap Australian white wine and working out what this sprawling mess of a story was all about.

It seemed to me that most of the big stories in the European Union had a common theme. Whether it was the row over the Constitution, or the services directive, or about Turkey joining the club, it boiled down to the consequences of 10 Eastern, former communist countries joining the EU in 2004. This had made inevitable a clash between different economic and social ideals, one – crudely called the Anglo Saxon model – more economically dynamic, open to globalisation and less socially protective than the other.

Spookily similar

The developing narrative is crucial to the way I intend to do the job. Although there has been a lot of criticism about Westminster politics being covered as soap opera, in part it is the notion of an unfolding tale that keeps people interested. We don't call what we write or report “stories” for nothing. If you know John Reid long wanted the defence job but was worried it would be seen as a sideways move, then it makes his appointment a bit more than “Mr Gubbins replaces Mr Dubbins”. If you know a bit of the history between Chirac and Blair, it makes the story easier to understand. This doesn't mean that ideas or policies are unimportant; indeed, they are absolutely central. But they, too, have a history and can only be understood in context.

This is a new role, not just for me, but for the BBC. Indeed it's the first time an editor has been based abroad. I have made it absolutely clear that I see it as a political job: it is about covering the politics of the European Union. I have a very broad definition of politics, which takes in cultural attitudes and economics but most certainly doesn't include cable-car crashes. It doesn't even include the death of a Pope. It probably would have included the Madrid bombings, because they happened in the middle of an election and had an intensely political effect. But I wouldn't necessarily expect to be the main reporter on the story. Of course there will be times when I'm on the spot, and times when its all hands to the pump, and I'm very happy with that, but my job isn't just to do better than my rivals from ITN or Sky, but to do something different, to provide a bit of context, a sense of the big picture.

This has led to a major misconception of the job. “So you'll be spending a lot more time in Brussels than the people before you?” Wrong. When he was the BBC's political editor and editors told him to “get out of Westminster”, the estimable John Cole used to growl: “Westminster is where politics happens.” But the same is not true of Brussels. It is only one place in the European Union where “politics happens”. It also happens in Berlin and Paris and Lisbon. I've made it very clear that a big part of the job is to cover the politics of the nation states of the European Union. Rushing around at those summits, I've always felt something of a lacuna, because while I knew the British position I was only hazily aware of the French and German argument and rarely had a clue about the stance of the others. I can't pretend I'll know every nuance of every country, but it will be very much my job to find out who the main protagonists in every argument are. The Commission and the Parliament are very important, but the game between nation states has not gone away; indeed, it has rather returned in the last few years.

There are some fairly obvious problems about covering the European Union, but at the heart is a very strange contradiction. Take the Conservative politician I mentioned earlier. I know that although for pragmatic reasons he wouldn't press for British withdrawal from the EU he dislikes it intensively and is suspicious of all its works. But here's the rub: that dislike makes him think it's dull and not worth hearing about. It is an odd conjunction. Indeed, a few people have worried that an increased commitment from the BBC to cover Europe will be taken as a sign of Europhilia. I tell them the two events in modern history I would most loved to have covered as a journalist are the rise of Hitler and the Russian revolution. This does not mean I approve of either.

There have been criticisms of the way the BBC has covered the European Union and, to be honest, it's been a bit of a curate's egg: some good points obscured by muddled thinking, perhaps because they were an amalgam of the views of EU haters and EU lovers, without much objective common sense in between. While there have been allegations of some awful howlers, on close investigation many complaints dressed up in academic language turned out to be something misheard or misunderstood that nicely fed the listeners' or viewers' own prejudices. But there has sometimes been a lack of subtlety in distinguishing between the various views on the EU.

The criticisms were particularly unfortunate because they came when Stephen Sakur was doing the job. He's a brilliant correspondent with great authority and story-telling ability and it's somewhat daunting to be following in his footsteps. He told the story of the European Union's enlargement from every single country involved and told it well. But his misfortune was, quite astonishingly, that there was no argument at the time about the likely consequences.

No howls of protest

I suspect one of the central problems I will encounter is a feeling that the European story is a bit dull, a bit worthy. I am convinced this is a central editorial problem in British journalism. And it is a journalist's problem, not the audience's problem. I simply don't believe that all the millions of people who go on holiday to France, Spain, Italy, who go to stag and hen nights in Prague and Dublin, who go to conferences in Germany and Poland, are all completely and utterly incurious about those countries and how their politics impacts upon us.

And I simply don't believe it as an editorial excuse, because while it is unfortunately true that many of our readers, viewers and listeners are not over enamoured with politics generally, we still stuff them full of American and British politics. Because so many journalists have been following American politics for years and adore it, we will get a full-scale profile of the bloke who didn't beat the man who didn't beat Kerry who didn't beat Bush. And there will probably be a profile of his mum and his home town as well. But until recently we didn't have a similar commitment to tell the world about the woman who will probably run the European Union for the next few years.

I have left until last one of the things that makes the European Union a problematic area for the BBC to cover: the passions it evokes. Whatever the complexities of British politics, there aren't many who think the Westminster Parliament simply shouldn't exist, that the Government shouldn't have the powers it does. Yet important voices question the legitimacy of the EU.

Again, I think I am lucky in my timing, Once it seemed as if deep suspicion of the European Union was confined to Britain and with no rejectionist party in Parliament, that side of the argument tended to get ignored, or covered as part of a Conservative feud. Now the question “What is the EU for?” is fundamental to the story I am telling. I will doubtless have many problems of definition and explanation, but I think one of the difficulties is because the European Union is such a strange beast and one that is still evolving. Sometimes the argument makes me think of two people staring at an octopus in an aquarium. One is saying that the creature before them is clearly a spider because of the number of legs, the other that it's obviously a fish as it's breathing in the water. The twist is not simply that it is neither, but that, in reality, by force of will it can become either, or something in-between. Perhaps the British, citizens of a nation that's an unequal alliance of three and a half countries and which grew out of an early English Empire, are well placed to understand the EU's oddities and potential, for good or for ill.