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MEPs in the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee on Tuesday (24 June) approved an enlargement report stressing that the EU's own capacity to absorb new states should be taken into account when considering membership applications in the future.

The EU's enlargement strategy should "strike a balance between the Union's geo-strategic interests, the impact of political developments outside its borders, and the Union's integration capacity, including its ability to cope with future internal and external challenges and to realise its political integration project," reads the report prepared by German centre-right MEP Elmar Brok.

It also comes in the aftermath of Ireland's rejection of the Lisbon treaty in a referendum 10 days ago, which has prompted divisions among EU leaders about the possibilities of continuing with the enlargement process at this stage. France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, have both declared that EU expansion will have to be halted until the document enters into force, while leaders in other countries – such as Poland – have said the process can continue.

EU leaders are gathering in Lisbon on Thursday (18 October) in an effort to put a full stop behind the 2005 political debacle, which saw French and Dutch voters rejecting the draft European Constitution. If all goes as planned, the 27-nation bloc will by the end of tomorrow have politically agreed a new 'Reform Treaty', but much will depend on how far Italy and Poland are prepared to go to defend their particular demands.

With only three days until EU leaders meet in Lisbon to adopt a new EU treaty, a number of issues are continuing to cloud the horizon. EU foreign ministers at their final pre-summit talks in Luxembourg on Monday (15 October) left the contentious issues to the 27 heads of states and governments to work out a deal at the end of this week (18-19 October).

Prague, Warsaw and the Hague are lobbying to get more power for national parliaments written into a new-look constitution for the European bloc.

The European constitution is something else tied with a Gordian knot. That knot is called ratification or rather the principle whereby each and every member state can hold the others to ransom in regard to its entry into effect. Eighteen member states have already ratified the existing constitutional treaty; three more would probably have little difficulty in doing so, but six remain. Of those six it might be reasonably assumed that three (France, Netherlands and Denmark) could be accommodated with concessions and safeguards. But the other three (the United Kingdom, Poland and the Czech Republic) seem to have grown potentially hostile to the whole constitutional enterprise.

EU foreign ministers have agreed on how the new EU treaty should be presented – it should not be called a constitution, and not contain symbols such as an EU flag – but key divisions on the substance of the text remain unresolved.

But deep rifts remain on key parts of the treaty that go beyond mere names and symbols and which concern the division of power between the EU and its member states. The status of the Charter of Fundamental Rights – a document listing citizens rights and fully integrated into the draft constitution – is the subject of strong controversy, with the UK in particular opposing a charter that is legally binding.

Paris and Madrid seek the scrapping of a number of national vetoes as proposed in the draft constitution. This is strongly opposed by London which is not yet prepared to give up its veto in justice and police matters.

Berlin has identified seven outstanding problems to be discussed at next week's EU leader's summit on a new treaty for the bloc.

But several issues remain open ahead of what is set to be a defining summit for the treaty negotiations beginning on Thursday (21 June). These are: the question of symbols (such as the flag, hymn and anthem) and whether they should be included and whether it should be explicitly stated that EU law has primacy over national law; "possible terminological changes"; the treatment of the Charter of Fundamental Rights; the "specificity" of the common foreign and security policy; the "delimitation of competences" between the EU and the member states and the role of national parliaments. Despite numerous requests by Poland however, the voting system remains off the list of topics that require "further discussion."

Der polnische Premierminister Jaroslaw Kaczynski hat die Hoffnungen der Staats- und Regierungschefs enttäuscht, möglichst bald einen Ausweg aus der institutionellen Sackgasse der EU zu finden. Kaczynski sagte, dass neue Vertragsverhandlungen mehr als ein Jahr dauern könnten. Der Präsident des Europäischen Parlaments, Hans-Gert Pöttering, warnte, dass ein polnisches Veto die "Union in eine Krise stürzen würde".

With just over a week to go before Sweden takes over the helm of the EU's six-month rotating presidency, the country's foreign minister, Carl Bildt, has made it clear he does not intend to waste time attempting to unblock the many bilateral disputes that currently pepper the EU's diplomatic landscape.

One area where he appears to be more optimistic for a quick solution is the future status of Iceland which – depending on an upcoming parliamentary debate – may submit an application in the coming months to join the EU.

Sweden's European affairs minister and former MEP, Cecilia Malmstrom, speaking alongside her colleague, said she is under no illusion the next six months are going to be easy and that the presidency's main priorities will be to deal with negotiations in the lead up to the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen in December and the economic crisis.

The bulk of the six proceedings challenging the compatibility of Lisbon Treaty and the German Constitution initiated by the conservative MP Peter Gauweiler and a number of left-wing deputies from Die Linke, revolves around the question of whether the Lisbon Treaty erodes the German parliament's powers of participation in EU decision making.

National parliaments and the Lisbon Treaty Under the Lisbon Treaty, national parliaments are involved in the EU's policy formulation process by safeguarding the subsidiarity principle. It is essentially a consultation mechanism operating before the onset of the EU decision-making procedure and is applicable only where competences are shared between the EU and the Member States.

Three final remarks suffice. First, both chambers of the German parliament have approved the Lisbon Treaty and have therefore made use of what the Federal Constitutional Court has deemed in its Maastricht judgment a key means of ensuring a democratic character of the Union and of Germany's membership in it. Second, much of the academic literature, as well as an empirical inquiry recently conducted at Utrecht University, have shown that the Bundestag, unlike the Bundesrat, is quite passive in using the available tools of influencing Union's policies and laws. Third, the outcome of the pending Lisbon Treaty cases is of prime importance not only for Germany but for the whole of the EU and its relevance transcends the remaining ratification procedures in Ireland, Poland and the Czech Republic. This is not least because the "sale of the state's vital powers" is at stake, as Prof. Klaus Buchner one of the complainants said. It has all the ingredients to become the most influential pronouncement that the German Federal Constitutional Court has ever made regarding the EU.

Hohe Wahlbeteiligung bei polnischen Wahlen: Kaczynski geschlagen [DE][en][fr]  Erschienen: Montag 22. Oktober 2007 Die EU könnte durchatmen: die Wahltagsbefragung der polnischen Parlamentswahlen vom 21. Oktober 2007 hat das Ende der zweijährigen Regierungszeit des Premierministers Jarosław Kaczyński angedeutet. Diese war fortwährend von Auseinandersetzungen mit anderen EU-Mitgliedstaaten gekennzeichnet.