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On 1 July 2008, France takes over the EU's six-month rotating presidency from Slovenia with an exceptionally busy agenda. According to a French diplomat in Brussels, "this presidency is the heaviest one of all the history of the European Union in terms of workload".

"For the first time, you have this coincidence of a heavier Union but there is also the end of the political mandate of the Commission and Parliament as well as the end of the [ratification process of] the Lisbon Treaty. You never had all these things together."

Irish referendum on everyone's minds The outcome of the Irish referendum on 12 June will undoubtedly have a considerable impact on the Presidency's schedule. 

Goulard also called on Irish politicians to face up to "their responsibilities" by coming up with solutions to the crisis. "We are again witnessing an amalgam where critics say Brussels irritates, that people do not want Europe, when in fact the people responsible for this slip are rather to be found in the national capitals." "We had a prime minister who said he had not read the treaty, an Irish European commissioner who said the same," she pointed out. And if Irish voters were being made to believe that the treaty influences Ireland's sovereignty on abortion, defence or tax policy, it is because Irish politicians failed to explain the text properly, which was considered by voters to be too complex. "These issues were not considered in the treaty," Goulard points out. "We can therefore measure how much the Irish political class failed in its mission to explain [the treaty]."

Dieser Sammelband gibt einen Überblick über die 20 zentralsten Politikfelder der EU – wie z.B. die Agrarpolitik, die Strukturfonds, den Verbraucherschutz, die Umweltpolitik. Für diese Politikfelder wird jeweils ein Abriss über die historische Entwicklung gegeben und auf die wesentlichen Steuerungsmechanismen und die maßgeblichen Akteure bei der Politikformulierung und Implementation eingegangen. Dabei wird jeweils die konkrete Ausprägung und Bedeutung des Mehrebenensystem thematisiert, das EU-Politiken in unterschiedlicher Weise kennzeichnet.

Mr Brown's government argues that a referendum is not needed as it is sufficiently different from the original constitution. But this argument has been dealt blows by two parliamentary committees. The Commons Foreign Affairs Committee over the weekend concluded that there was "no material difference" between the treaty and the foreign policy aspects of the constitution.

A small group of politicians from around the EU have published a repackaged treaty for the bloc, hoping to feed into the emerging consensus among member states that a "simplified treaty" has to be extracted from the ashes of the rejected EU constitution.

The treaty has been reduced to 70 articles (12,800 words) plus two protocols, one containing institutional changes and one containing policy innovations - by contrast the original EU constitution contained 448 articles and around 63,000 words. The chopped down dimensions come from only taking the innovations contained in the third part of the treaty - which essentially ties together former EU treaties - and putting them into additional protocols.

Das siebte Rahmenprogramm für Forschung ist in zweiter Lesung im Parlament angenommen worden. Somit steht einem pünktlichen Inkrafttreten des bisher umfassendsten Forschungs- und Technologieprogramms der EU am 1. Januar 2007 nichts mehr im Weg.

Germany and the European Commission have downplayed a series of recent clashes over EU policies such as energy and justice matters, displaying unity at the launch of Berlin's six-month presidency of the bloc. The college of commissioners on Tuesday (9 January) met the German government in Berlin, kicking off Germany's stint at the helm of the EU which will see both Brussels and Berlin eager to avoid the frequent confrontations which characterised 2006.

Vasile Puscas, university professor and EU chief negotiator has published a study on Romanian accession negotiations and urges the EU to revise its negotiation and communication policy.

Kurzbeschreibung The European project has come a long way in establishing peace, creating a common market, and expanding its borders. At the same time, diminishing popular legitimacy has spurred talk about a European Union in crisis. How far has the EU really come in fulfilling its grand visions? Is the project barely half-way? Or could we say with some confidence that European integration is solidified and will continue to get stronger? This book brings together contributors from economics, political science and law to offer different perspectives on this larger issue. The questions asked include: how far has the European Union come in its creation of a Common Foreign and Security Policy; what will happen to the state monopolies; is there a common strategy at the European level for integrating immigrants; and, to what extent do national political parties cooperate with the Europarties. By investigating these and similar issues the book contributes to an assessment of how successful European integration has been to date.

Almost two years after adopting ambitious green goals, a year after signing the new Lisbon Treaty and some sixteen months after the first signs of the financial crisis, EU leaders are meeting in Brussels on Thursday (11 December) to write a new chapter in the three long-running dossiers.

But it will be his Irish colleague, Prime Minister Brian Cowen to open the show by presenting Dublin's analysis on why the Irish voters rejected the EU's reform treaty in the June referendum and what can be done to rescue its ratification.

Moreover, Dublin could see a pledge to retain the country's commissioner if all other EU leaders follow the French line – all in a bid to enable the Irish government to hold the second referendum by 31 October, according to the draft document. It would mean that one of the key elements of the EU's institutional reform would be changed despite previous pressure on member states not to touch the package when the bloc was turning the former European Constitution into the Lisbon Treaty, following the negative referendums in France and the Netherlands.

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."