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Despite unanimous opposition from leading media freedom organizations, the Hungarian parliament has adopted a controversial law overhauling the state-owned media and creating a Media Council with utterly disproportionate powers. The law was passed by an overwhelming majority of votes (256 to 87) on 21 December. Appointed directly by the government, the Media Council’s five members will not only have a right of oversight but also the authority to impose heavy fines (of up to 700,000 euros for a TV station and 89,000 euros for an online publication) for content that is “not politically balanced” or “violates human dignity.” The council can also punish offences against religion and the nation, while journalists can be forced to reveal their sources when national security is involved. Although the government intends to ensure “fair balance” in the media, it has not respected this principle in its choice of Media Council members, who all belong to the ruling Fidesz party. The council is supposed to enforce “balance” but it will have no opposition representatives. “Our organization, a 2005 Sakharov Prize laureate, urges the European Parliament’s president and bureau to make discussion of this law an emergency item on the next plenary session’s agenda,” Reporters Without Borders said.

MEPs are awaiting next week's entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty with impatience as the new institutional rules give the EU assembly a say in an array of new areas, including the EU's money-eating farm policy and its long-term budget. While the new EU foreign policy chief and council president represents a shake-up for the external face of the bloc, the internal shake-up, placing further substantial co-legislative power into the hands of euro-parliamentarians, is widely seen as the more profound change.

Come 1 December, the parliament will gain a say on, amongst other areas, legal immigration, judicial co-operation in criminal matters, police co-operation, structural funds, services of general economic interest [euro-jargon for public services], structural funds, transport, personal data protection and intellectual property rights. The rise in legislative powers represents almost a doubling in power, with the instances where deputies will work on proposed laws on an equal footing with member states rising from around 40 to almost 90. Of these, the most important areas are seen as energy security, common commercial policy and farm policy, with the last policy area accounting - contentiously - for around 40 percent of the EU's budget.

At their last meeting before the summer break, EU foreign ministers on Monday (26 July) gave the greenlight for the start of negotiations on Iceland's membership bid. Talks will formally begin on Tuesday. The small north Atlantic island, with a population of just 320,000, has aligned itself with many EU laws and is seen as fitting snugly with the slightly more ineffable European 'norms', but negotiations on a few key issues - such as fishing rights and its traditional whale hunting - are expected to be difficult.

In addition, the UK and the Netherlands have linked actual membership with resolution of a dispute over the €3.8 billion in British and Dutch savings, lost in the banking crisis that consumed the nation in 2008. After the Icelandic Icesave internet bank collapsed two years ago, depositers in the UK and the Netherlands were compensated by their governments. The Hague and London now are demanding Reykjavik pay them back.

Icelanders themselves in a recent referendum rejected a payout plan that would have cost each household tens of thousands of euros. The disagreement has soured the population's sentiment towards the EU. Immediately after the crisis, a majority of Icelanders looked to the EU as a solution to their problems, but the bitter fight with London and the Hague has slashed support for EU membership on the island. In addition to potential controversial policy issues, there is also the increasingly negative opinion of Icelanders towards EU membership.

Member states are considering taking the EU Parliament to court if it does not back down on demands for new powers on EU foreign policy and international agreements, EUobserver has learnt. Ambassadors representing member states at a meeting in Brussels on Wednesday (13 October) signaled their discontent over an inter-institutional agreement between the European Commission and the EU legislature which may give fresh powers to euro-deputies, especially when it comes to international negotiations on behalf of the EU.

The draft report, according to an analysis by the council of ministers' legal services, could lead to a stand-off between EU institutions if adopted as such next week in Strasbourg. "The court option is not off the table," one EU source said. Ambassadors will come back to the matter in their meeting next Wednesday, following the MEP's vote in the plenary. The crux of the matter is to what extent MEPs can be part of EU delegations to multilateral and bilateral meetings and negotiations with other countries. According to the draft, the Parliament wants to have its representatives guaranteed participation in all multilateral, but also bilateral agreements "of particular political importance" - for instance on trade or fisheries.

Ireland's Green Party, the junior partner in the country's governing coalition with centre-right Fianna Fail, has announced it is to pull the plug on the alliance, calling on the government to announce elections in January.

However, despite misgivings, most party members were won to the side of sticking with the coalition by the party leadership's argument that it would be better to stay in and deliver on some of the party's policy hopes than be outside. In a vote over backing an agreement for government with Fianna Fail, 85 percent of members endorsed the party leadership's strategy. The leading opposition parties, the centre-right Fine Gael and centre-left Labour - on track to form a coalition after any election - offer a virtually identical response to the crisis to the government. On Monday afternoon, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny made a fresh call for immediate elections.

Since it came to power in July this year, the Slovak centre-right government has called for private investors to feel the pain of any rescue operation under the eurozone umbrella. It considers the Greek bail-out "essentially a mistake" and a "precedent" that made European governments a "hostage" of financial markets. "If we continue this way, we are close to a pyramid scheme," the Slovak prime minister, Iveta Radicova, told journalists after the Wednesday government session dealing mainly with Ireland (24 November). She warned that a system of accumulating debts eventually risked falling like "a house made of cards". "Once again, taxpayers are expected to pay the bill. Once again, the banks are being rescued," Ms Radicova said, hinting that Lisbon and Madrid could be next going cap in hand to their EU colleagues.

The incoming Hungarian presidency of the European Union is bracing itself for an unexpectedly difficult six months (Jan-June 2011) at the helm, likely to test the diplomatic skills of the presidency first-timers to the full. The ongoing fight to shore up eurozone stability, together with calls for EU treaty change and acrimonious EU budget talks are among the prickly issues on the packed agenda, with Turkish accession talks and the Roma ethnic question also potential flashpoints.

Some EU and member state officials have been alarmed at what they perceive as a concentration of power under Herman Van Rompuy, the bloc's first president of the European Council, the body representing EU leaders. "Mr Van Rompuy has taken on a number of issues that should instead be run by the rotating presidency, helped by the current political limbo surrounding the Belgian government," one Polish official said earlier this month.

The Irish government has unveiled a far-reaching austerity package with sweeping cuts and tax hikes in an effort to meet the tough conditions of an €85 billion EU-IMF bail-out plan, an architecture of adjustment that will radically alter the very structure of how the country is run.

It is a plan that will hit every citizen and sector of the Irish economy, but will hit working people, students and low-income earners the hardest, a move that has already provoked both a deep fury from many but also a bitter resignation amongst others. Key measures include a slashing of welfare benefits, a hiking and broadening of income taxes, a sharp increase in university fees, the imposition of property taxes and water charges.

Dublin appears to have won the day against pressure from other EU member states and the commission that it hike its ultra-low corporation tax of 12.5 percent, calling the rate "a cornerstone of our industrial policy". Acquiescing to an IMF demand that labour costs be slashed, pay for minimum wage earners will be reduced by a full 12 percent, higher than the 10 percent that had been predicted, from €8.65 an hour to €7.65.

Portuguese, Spanish and EU leaders, alarmed at the seemingly unquenchable vengeance of this marketplace leviathan, insisted that the two Iberian nations were very far from having to follow Ireland and Greece in asking for bail-outs.

EU economics chief Olli Rehn sought to buttress the the standing of Portugal insisting on the "very different" situation between Lisbon and Dublin, while the head of the eurozone, Luxemburgish Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker described the market vigilantism against Portugal and Spain as "not justified". Railing against the state of affairs, Mr Rehn told MEPs on Monday: "Any talk of deconstruction of the European project is irresponsible. All member states would have been in a much more difficult situation without the European Union and its political shield."

Slovakia, which joined the eurozone last year, should have a 'plan B' to return to its national currency, the country's parliamentary speaker, Richard Sulik, has said, amid frustration over the way the eurozone is handling the debt crisis. "The time is ripe for Slovakia to stop blindly trust in what eurozone leaders say and prepare a plan B. This is the re-introduction of the Slovak koruna," Mr Sulik said in an opinion piece published in the bussiness daily Hospodarske noviny on Sunday (12 December).

The Slovak centre-right government has repeatedly called for private investors to feel the pain of any rescue operation under the eurozone umbrella. It considers the Greek bail-out a mistake that made European governments a hostage to financial markets. The parliamentary speaker said it is "irresponsible" for states to risk financial problems at home by taking on the liabilities of their debt-ridden colleagues under the European Financial Stability Facility, a temporary bail-out tool agreed in May and currently providing aid to Ireland.

German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has said his country is willing to discuss greater harmonisation of eurozone tax policy, adding that the next decade is likely to see Europe take significant steps towards closer political union. The remarks, made in Germany's mass-selling Bild am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday (12 December), come as EU leaders look set to agree a limited EU treaty change this week in order to set up a permanent crisis mechanism to provide financial support to struggling eurozone states.

Meeting in the German town of Freiburg on Friday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel also said eurozone leaders must draw a fundamental lesson from the ongoing debt crisis and take steps towards political integration, including the harmonisation of tax policies or labour law. These initiatives would foster greater convergence of eurozone economies and "show this is not just about currency issues but also about political co-operation, which has to be deepened," said Ms Merkel.

Germany has successfully won its demand for the permanent mechanism to include the private sector sharing in future bail-out costs, reports the BBC. Such a decision could significant raise the borrowing costs of 'peripheral' eurozone states, as investors demand extra yields to cover the costs of a potential debt restructuring under the new mechanism.