Sprite is a prime example of a multispeed Europe | George Frey/Getty Images Welcome to a multi-Sprite Europe A fight over subpar food offers a glimpse into the EU’s future.

If you want to know what a multispeed Europe looks like, take a can of Sprite. Or even a fish stick.

An increasingly frustrated European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker is pushing the EU’s national governments to map out a clearer vision of the bloc’s future — and the extent to which they want Brussels to delve into the lives of 510 million Europeans. Stung by his experience with controversial subjects ranging from pesticides to trade deals, Juncker is fed up with Brussels being scapegoated for failures in national capitals.

A somewhat obscure debate over food policy this week has given Juncker a perfect opportunity to make EU leaders draw a cleaner line between what is Brussels’ responsibility and where member countries have to step up.

EU leaders gathering for a European Council summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday are expected to tackle the highly contentious issue of big companies and supermarkets selling supposedly subpar versions of brand name foods in Eastern Europe.

Heavyweight countries such as France, Germany, Spain and Italy, whose leaders met in Versailles this week, are beginning to coalesce about the vision of a multispeed Europe — and for Juncker the controversy over food quality marks the perfect opportunity to put that vision to the test.

The last thing Europe needs is a “new Nutella checking agency” — Christian Schmidt, German Agriculture Minister

The food issue is a long-running sore. Eastern European countries cast dual-quality foods as a failure of the single market and discrimination against former communist states, but the problem has never gained much traction at the top table. Until now.

Juncker has helped propel the issue of dual-quality foods onto the summit agenda with political gamesmanship. The Czech Republic and Slovakia, backed by Romania, Slovenia, Hungary and Bulgaria, have ramped up their complaints following research showing that Czech Sprite has more artificial sweeteners than in Germany and Iglo fish sticks have 7 percent less fish — and have been calling on the Commission to act.

Juncker seized the occasion to lay out in microcosm the possible visions for the future of Europe in a Commission white paper earlier this month. In short, he asked member countries whether they really wanted Brussels stepping in to standardize recipes and ingredients to make all of Europe’s Sprites taste the same.

To drive home his point, Juncker suggested two possible options on dual-quality food in the run-up to the summit. The first option sought to end “misleading practices” through more stringent application of existing EU law — with the cooperation of national authorities.

The Nutella checking agency?

Juncker’s more explosive second choice called for a European Consumer Protection Agency to ensure consistent food quality across the single market.

His gambit worked. The EU’s national governments agreed that they would prefer Brussels to back off.

Germany’s Agriculture Minister Christian Schmidt stressed the last thing Europe needed was a “new Nutella checking agency.” While he admitted there was a problem, he said that Europe “doesn’t need new rules or anything overly prescriptive” to solve the problem, a source said.

In draft conclusions for this week’s summit, EU leaders finally look set to plump for the less interventionist option. They will almost certainly simply “welcome the decision of the [European] Commission to address the issue of differentiated quality of foodstuffs.”

They will then agree to pass the controversy onto a high-level forum — involving government officials and industry representatives — to work out what steps the EU should take next. With Brussels declining to take on greater powers, it becomes more likely that Eastern European countries would take matters into their own hands to force change.

The Commission and Western European states have traditionally resisted taking any sweeping action, with defenders of the status quo arguing that the problem of dual-quality can be addressed through labeling. As long as the small print is different between countries, there is no problem, they argue.

Food companies add that they are simply adapting to tastes in different markets.

Florence Ranson, a spokesperson at the giant food lobby FoodDrinkEurope, said its members “do not see any ‘dual-quality’ issues for their branded products,” and that “companies take into consideration the taste and flavor preferences of consumers in each country,” which may result in product variants.

“Some companies may for their own reasons decide to offer a standardized recipe across the European market, whereas others decide to adjust their recipes to the local market,” Ranson continued. “These are business decisions.”

The acrimony over the double standard issue had subsided until two weeks ago, when Czech European Commissioner for Justice Věra Jourová tweeted that the practice of selling dual-quality foods was “unfair to consumers.”

Last year, Prague wrote to Jourová and other commissioners to seek action on file. People following the dispute say that the Visegrad group of countries — the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland — had also been exerting increasing pressure as a combined diplomatic force.

"We take this issue very seriously," Jourová tweeted this week, on the same day as a meeting of agriculture ministers, where she raised the issue. "Consumers must not be misled."

After EU leaders adopt a position this week, officials in the EU's Consumer Protection Cooperation Network — a body of national authorities responsible for consumer rights in Europe — will convene March 16 to map out reported cases of double standards.

The European Council will then review the progress in June.

Simon Marks and Emmet Livingstone contributed reporting.