It has been one of those weeks when the grand themes of European politics have promised much but delivered little.  The French have given Lady Ashton a bashing, but few people, including Lady Ashton herself, appear to have taken much notice. Mr Van Rompuy has remained below the parapet (though doubtless doing valuable work down there). The Ukrainian elections have been declared free and fair (or thereabouts) and though the result has been close it now looks likely that Prime Minister Iulia Timoschenko will have conceded defeat and arranged an orderly handover of power before you read this. The European Parliament looks likely finally to approve the new European Commission. Which has about it the feel of being distinctly underwhelming.  There are worries about the euro collapsing; but...

Recent developments in the election process in Ukraine may lead to potential de-legitimisation of the election results, no matter who formally wins it. The period between the two rounds of the presidential elections have seen a series of alarming events showing that both sides are getting ready for falsifications on the part of their opponents, and for post-election confrontation: The situation with two chairmen and two seals of the Higher Administrative Court, being the highest judicial instance to approve the election results; Dismissal and re-establishment of the acting Minister of Internal Affairs Yuriy Lutsenko; The seizure of Ukrayina printing house that prints voting ballots, along with passports; Information regarding the amassing of sup...

Spanish foreign minister Miguel Moratinos made a rather revealing comment in the foreign affairs committee of the European Parliament this morning. Pleading for more time to answer the 1000 questions MEPs insist on asking at once, he said: "I think the rotating presidency should have some privileges, especially in the European Parliament." And this laced with a tinge of exasperation. It nicely sums up difficulty of this so-called 'transition' EU presidency for its top actors – the recently (US) jilted prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and Spain's top diplomat. They want a role but they are not really supposed to have a role. The rotating presidency is not gone - it was just (openly) hidden in the complex folds of the Lisbon Treaty, upon us now, in all its foreign policy neb...

Proponents of a greener farm policy have raised the stakes in the CAP debate The CAP is under assault. But not from the traditional army of budget disciplinarians, aiming their scythes at the farm budget. Instead, the new assailants are wearing green and are carrying pots of gold. However, attached to their shining treasure are a multitude of strings, and a radically different logic for subsidising EU farmers. Over recent weeks and months, a flurry of reports have emerged in favour of an eco-oriented CAP. Last week the European Parliament heard French MEP Stephane Le Foll set out his vision for a food and environment policy to supplant agricultural policy, alongside the release of a joint report from environmental NGO Birdlife and the European Landowners Organisation (ELO) cal...

Here in Britain we are being kept interested or aggravated by the inquiry the government is holding into the decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003. Ever since that ill-fated invasion, and indeed even before it, a growing number of people have wanted to indict its authors - and in particular Britain’s then Prime Minister Tony Blair - on charges ranging from incompetence to war criminality. Despite there already having been several inquiries into this imbroglio and there being few facts that have not already been disclosed, the Government has yielded to pressure and allowed the present full inquiry under Lord Chilcot. Plenty of people, including Baroness Ashton now Europe’s High Representative for Foreign Policy, were convinced at the time by Mr Blair’s rhetoric.  Many now claim t...

So US  president Barack Obama may not bother to come to the EU-US summit after all. Whatever he ultimately decides, the prospect of his visit has certainly been putting the EU's brand new foreign policy structures under quite a strain. Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero wanted him in Madrid. EU council president Herman Van Rompuy had pleaded for Brussels. The new Lisbon Treaty, just two months in place, leaves open where bilateral summits with third countries should be held. The head says Brussels. But the heart – at least the Spanish (political) heart - says Madrid. And just when it appeared that the EU’s players had sorted this inglorious little tussle out  - the May summit is to be in Madrid  but after Spain’s EU presidency such summits will be held in Brussels (s...

So, the first round of the Ukrainian elections is over. As expected, two contenders reached the home straight - Viktor Yanukovych, with 35.32% of votes, and Yuliya Tymoshenko, with 25.05% of the 66.76% of those who came to the polls. International organisations called the elections fair and free of mass violations. Meanwhile, the situation with the National Exit Poll remains unclear. By contrast to the other five exit polls and official Central Electoral Committee results, it reported only a 4% difference of votes between Tymoshenko and Yanukovych, while the rest guessed right the 10% gap. What was it – a mistake, a difference of methods, something else? Or maybe their data were true, while the official results were influenced by some unclear and unknown to us factors - we don’t know ye...

The  current preoccupation with how visible the EU is in Haiti is utterly unpleasant. Now, in the middle of such human misery and loss, is not the time to be worried about whether EU helpers are as noticed as those from the US. What matters is that Haitians get aid, not whether the European Union gets visibility for its buck. Yet the issue is gathering legs. Catherine Ashton’s non-appearance on the devastated island was the springboard for the discontent. She first was criticized by MEPs for not going there. Then French officials took up the cudgels. Internal market commissioner-to-be Michel Barnier, according to the widely-read Coulisses de Bruxelles, let it be known that he was on the spot directly after the Tsunami struck in 2004. The issue hung heavily over the EU meeting of fore...

European Commission policy-makers believe EU leaders are finally seeing things with clearer eyes. The financial crisis and its after-effects, China’s growing economic and political assertiveness, and globalization, have finally brought home to member states the power dynamics of a globalised world. Slowly waking up to this fact throughout last year, the point was rammed home at the Copenhagen climate summit in December where the EU - brimming with good intentions -  was clearly not a player. This is good news, say those drawing up the successor to the 2000-2010 Lisbon Strategy – a catalogue of (largely ignored)  targets to improve education, innovation and research in a bid to catch up with the US.  It means that member states may now consider deeper economic cooperation, something t...

Last week I wrote about how those making policy - or undertaking any serious activity at all - should first ask themselves ‘what are we really trying to do here?’ But there is another injunction on similar lines which is just as vital, especially as we all tend to get carried away on a flood of short-term political excitement: it is to ask ‘and the ultimate consequence will be?’  The latter in particular is a question that could usefully be addressed to the new Czech Commissioner for Enlargement-designate, Mr Stefan Fuele. You can see how these injunctions work together by considering - as Mr Fuele will now be doing for the next five years or so - the delicate matter of further European Union enlargement and specifically the controversial issue of Turkish entry, which has again been...