Why no EU flag?

I'm the first to admit, I'm no expert in diplomatic protocol. This morning  US Secretary of State Clinton flew to the UK for a whistle-stop  visit. She met Prime Minister  Gordon Brown and Foreign Secretary, David Milliband. 

This is from the FCO Flickr site. The UK is a member of the European Union, but there is no sign of the European flag anywhere. I thought this may just be a mistake, so I started Googling, and it soon became clear that the UK seems a bit reluctant to display the EU flag anywhere near these diplomatic occasions

Here is another example

 This time Brown with Sarkozy in 2008.

I'm pretty sure if I continued, I'd be hard pressed to find a EU flag behind any UK politician in the UK .

I then began to wonder whether the other EU members were as ashamed of the flag as we were.

I think you know where this is going!

This is the reverse of the Brown Sarko visit in July 2009.

and this the visit of President Obama to Dresden with Angela Merkel

and  Obama with Sarko

and Obama at the G8 with Berlusconi and President Napolitano

And this is Slovenian Prime Minister Borut Pahor( right) with Macedonian Prime Minister Gruevski in Ljubljana in January 2009

Why?

Comments

[Peter Harvey]

Barcelona buses wear flags on appropriate occasions. Today is Spain's national holiday (Columbus Day in the USA) so they will have Spanish ones. On 9 May (Europe Day) they wear European flags. If you go to http://tinyurl.com/yfhrlh6 (Wikimedia Commons) you will see the European, Spanish and Catalan flags all together. It could well be on the Catalan Government palace.

The Spanish Foreign Ministry's web site (http://tinyurl.com/yl2m4wm) has a logo that combines the European and Spanish flags,

[Peter Harvey]

At this morning's military parade in Madrid the march-past of the colours was led by the flags of the UN, NATO and the EU, the three organisations under whose authority Spanish troops operate abroad.

[Peter Harvey]

El País (http://preview.tinyurl.com/yg2bl5s) reports that Václav Klaus has signed the Lisbon Treaty and describes him as an 'ultraliberal economist, fan of Margaret Thatcher, who refuses to fly the European flag on his castle in Prague.'