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The freshly appointed UK defence secretary has publicly supported the idea of a European army, a key ambition of the French EU presidency.

In 2007, during French Bastille Day celebrations in which troops from every EU member state marched down the Champs-Elysees, Mr Sarkozy said the EU should construct a unified military. The Bastille comments followed similar remarks from German Chancellor Angela Merkel in March of the same year on the occasion of the EU's 50th birthday. At the time, she said in an interview that she supported the idea of a unified EU army. However, the UK, the largest of the EU's big-three military spenders ahead of France and Germany, has until now opposed the idea of a common EU force, arguing that it would unnecessarily duplicate tasks performed by NATO. According to the Lisbon Treaty, rejected in June by the Irish in a referendum, the North Atlantic alliance "remains the foundation of the collective defence of [EU] members," with NATO always headed by a US general, however.

The Czech EU presidency this weekend retracted its support for Israel amid the ground attack on Gaza, while France switched its criticism from Israel to Hamas.

Meanwhile, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who last week complained about Israel's disproportionate use of force, laid the lion's share of blame on Hamas in an interview on Monday.

The melee of EU diplomats will also be joined on Monday by Tony Blair, the former British leader and current special envoy of the Middle East quartet (the EU, US, UN and Russia).

EU policies applied to the Western Balkans - such as a regional free trade area - are inspiring the "Eastern Partnership" with Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan and "hopefully" Belarus, participants at a conference organized Wednesday (17 September) by the German Konrad Adenauer think-tank learned.

Initially a Polish-Swedish proposal endorsed in June by all member states, the Eastern Partnership is designed to deepen ties with the "European neighbours" to the east, balancing the 'Mediterranean Union' with the southern "neighbours of Europe," as Polish MEP Jacek Saryusz-Wolski put it. The Georgian conflict sped up the process of drafting the eastern policy by the European Commission, with president Jose Manuel Barroso scheduled to sketch out the main features already at the EU summit on 15 October.

On the first day of the European Council (11 December), EU leaders agreed on a package of Irish demands which pave the way for a second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland, which will most probably be held in October 2009.

Under the compromise text, seen by EurActiv, all EU countries are expected to keep their commissioner. Ireland will receive legal guarantees on taxation policy, social and ethical issues and the Common Security and Defence Policy (CFSP), with regard to Ireland's traditional policy of neutrality among other provisions. 

Transitional accommodations  Therefore, transitional measures have been adopted with respect to the Presidency of the European Council, as well as of the European Parliament. The member state holding the EU presidency when the Lisbon Treaty enters into force (Sweden holds the presidency until the end of 2009) will continue to chair all meetings in the same manner as today's presidencies.  But the next EU presidency holder (Spain from January 2010) will make changes in conformity with the Lisbon Treaty, making room for a permanent President of the European Council and a High Representative for foreign affairs and security policy.  Also, European Parliament will be enlarged from 736 to 754 members in the course of 2010, if indeed the Irish say 'yes' to the reform treaty. The elections will take place under the Treaty of Nice, but soon the Parliament is expected to accommodate the provisions of Lisbon.  Answering questions from the press, Poettering acknowledged that the situation was not ideal, and the legitimacy of MEPs falling between the Nice and Lisbon Treaties should be preserved, as their status should not be different. He admitted that legal experts would struggle with the issue. 

Although the fate of the EU's Reform Treaty was not officially discussed at the bloc's extraordinary summit on Georgia on 1 September, it proved to be a highly topical issue, with various top-level European politicians highlighting the importance of its entry into force if the EU is to become a more powerful global player.

Political analysts have underlined that the EU was lucky to have a country as big as France at its helm during the Georgia crisis as this tempered the lack of real EU leadership.  "The EU was lucky France held the EU Presidency, because Russia agreed to engage with Mr. Sarkozy on the ceasefire. But they may not have engaged with the EU if a smaller country such as the Czech Republic were EU president, especially with its difficult bilateral relationship with Moscow as a result of its decision to host US missile defence," said Antonio Missiroli, the director of the European Policy Centre, quoted in The Irish Times. 

Even the Polish President, who in the recent past called the Lisbon Treaty "pointless" and said he would not sign it (EurActiv 01/07/08), spoke a very different language after the summit.  Asked by EurActiv if he was now more in favour of the Lisbon Treaty, Kaczynski conceded that indeed, several EU leaders had mentioned informally that the Lisbon Treaty would have given the EU better instruments to deal with challenges such as the current Georgia crisis. He then added that Ireland should hold a second referendum. 

Since the morning of December 9, we are to be present in the (Serb-dominated) north, in the south, and all over Kosovo. We are to have more than 100 people in the north, including policemen, the prosecutors, the judges, customs officers and the customs department,” declared Kermabon. The announcement from EULEX says that around 1,400 people international staff and some hundreds of local personnel from EULEX will have at its disposal the necessary number of workers for its initial operation.

Kermabon declared that starting from December 9, the United Nations Mission in Kosovo, UNMIK, is to end its mission, and EULEX is to be installed. “UNMIK switched off and EULEX switched on,” he told Balkan Insight.

The final shape of an EU security mission to Georgia and broader EU-Russia relations will top the agenda of an EU foreign ministers' meeting in France this weekend. The possibility of relaxing sanctions against Belarus and prospects for a new Ukraine treaty will also come up for debate.

It remains uncertain if the unit will be composed of EU-badged policemen or soldiers however, if it will stand alongside OSCE monitors or be part of an OSCE-led team and if it will have access to the Georgian breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

The Avignon meeting will also examine if the EU should relax sanctions against Belarus, which last month released three political prisoners and promises to hold its free and fairest-ever parliamentary elections on 28 September.

The deployment of EULEX, the EU's police and justice mission in Kosovo, is to start on 9 December, a week later than planned, it was announced on Tuesday (2 December), as several thousand Kosovo Albanian demonstrators took to the streets of Pristina to protest against the deployment.

Under a plan approved by the United Nations Security Council last week, some 2,000 EU police, justice and customs officials will take over UN duties in Kosovo. It also foresees the EU mission being deployed under a UN mandate and take a neutral position regarding Kosovo's status – something which pleases Belgrade, but enrages Pristina.

Kosovars also fear the mission as planned will effectively partition their country, populated by 90 percent Albanians, and a minority of Serbs, mostly in the northern areas. "For us, it is important ... to see EULEX deployed as soon as possible across [the whole of] Kosovo," President Fatmir Sejdiu said Tuesday, adding that he did not "understand the delays," DPA writes.

Pristina is still opposed to the compromise deal between Serbia, the European Union and the United Nations on the deployment of EULEX, the EU's police and justice mission in Kosovo, and its stance will not change, Kosovo's prime minister, Hashim Thaci, said on Sunday (16 November). "Kosovo will not change its position. It is the points of this plan that need to change. We have a state position and we will defend that position until the end," Mr Thaci was reported as saying by Serbian news portal B92.net.

Under pressure from Belgrade, the UN presented a revised six-point plan to Kosovo leaders last week, under which EULEX would be neutral regarding Kosovo's status and would enter the Serb-dominated parts of Kosovo. Pristina considers that the revised proposal clashes with its interests, however.

Prague and Warsaw have poured cold water on French calls for a moratorium on a planned US missile shield in Europe, with both capitals saying that president Nicolas Sarkozy overstepped his mandate.

"I don't think that third countries, even such good friends as France, can have a particular right to express themselves on this issue," Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Saturday (15 November)

The Polish leader described Mr Sarkozy's comments as his "own point of view, [with] no impact of the future of the project," according to AFP, adding that "The question of the anti-missile shield is governed by an agreement between Poland and the United States."

With Russia's backing for the G20 summit, French President Nicolas Sarkozy proposed a new security and defence arrangement between the EU, Russia and the US to be agreed at a summit mid-2009, calling both on Moscow and Washington to refrain from deploying missiles until that date. Mr Sarkozy was speaking at a press conference on Friday (14 November) following the EU-Russia summit held in Nice, alongside his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev.

"As acting EU council president I propose that mid-2009 we gather for instance within the OSCE [Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe] to lay the basis of what might be a future EU security arrangement ...which would of course involve the Russians and the Americans," Mr Sarkozy said, backing an idea originally proposed by his Russian counterpart.

he European Commission is working on an 'Eastern Partnership' with Ukraine, Georgia and other countries lying on its eastern borders, diplomats and EU officials have announced.

Ukraine wants an 'Eastern European Partnership', modelled on the defunct Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, as a precursor to future EU membership, the country's ambassador in Brussels told journalists yesterday (6 November)

According to Veselovski, the partnership's added value compared to the EU's current neighbourhood policy would reside in a joint effort to change perceptions about the region, which he said is too often portrayed as a conflict-ridden area unfit for EU integration. 

For the first time ever, the president of the European Commission joined the Munich security conference over the weekend, a meeting of European, US and Russian leaders.

"I believe this is the first time a president of the European Commission has been invited to speak at the Munich Security Conference. Could this mean the Commission is thinking of strengthening its divisions of bureaucrats with those of the military kind? Or in fact does it mean that the security dimension is widening beyond its hard military core?" Mr Barroso said in his speech, sent to the media in a press release.

European Union member states are sharply divided over whether to condemn Israel for its bombing of UN schools and other buildings during its 23-day war on Gaza. Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Romania are opposed to condemning the shelling of UN Relief and Works Agency infrastructure and do not want the EU to call for an international investigation of alleged war crimes by both Israel and the Hamas governors of Gaza, according to sources close to discussions amongst EU diplomats.

At the other end of the table, a coalition of five member states, Belgium, Cyprus, Greece, Ireland and Sweden, is demanding that the bloc call for an international investigation in its conclusions to come out of a meeting of EU foreign ministers next week.

But enthusiasm for further enlargement was already on the wane before the crisis. Now, the growing resentment over intra-EU labour migration in countries like Britain, Ireland, and Spain is hardly likely to engender support for millions of potential new migrants from Turkey, or the Balkans or for structural adjustment funds to be spent outside of today's EU. As a new paper by the Center for European Reform notes "With Europeans now fearing for their jobs and incomes, opposition to the union taking in more poor countries will most likely rise further."