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Polish President Lech Kaczynski at noon on Saturday (10 October) signed the Lisbon Treaty at a ceremony in Warsaw. But Czech head of state Vaclav Klaus put a dampener on the occasion with attempts to revive World War Two-era tensions from his castle in Prague.

Mr Kaczynski warmly endorsed Poland's EU membership. But he said integration should not go too far and indicated that his accord is based on trust that the EU will take in more former Communist states in the future. "Without any complexes, without fears we have opted for further integration with the European Union, because we feel good, we feel confident inside this fellowship," he said. "The union is a collection of sovereign states and will remain so. But co-operation will become ever more close." "The union as an exceptionally successful experiment cannot be closed to others who want to join it. Not just Balkan countries, but also Ukraine, Georgia, in the future, others. The union can't say No to them," he added, in his final words before putting pen to paper

Germany's new conservative-liberal coalition has decided to support 'open-ended' EU-Turkey negotiations and favour a 'privileged partnership' in case they fail, it emerged on Wednesday. The deal is a compromise between calls to reject Ankara's EU bid, coming from chancellor Angela Merkel's Bavarian sister party (CSU) and the Turkey-favourable stance of her liberal junior partner, the Free Democratic Party (FDP).

Ms Merkel was a strong supporter of the 'privileged partnership' before becoming chancellor. She now maintains that Turkey must fulfil accession criteria and also that the EU has to honour its commitments. But if negotiations were to fail, the coalition agreement is likely to say that Turkey could be offered a 'privileged partnership.' The wording of the coalition agreement is very similar to the one Ms Merkel negotiated with her former government partner, the Social Democratic Party.

A joint EU-US mediation effort aimed at ending years of political deadlock in Bosnia-Herzegovina ended on Wednesday (21 October) with no agreement on giving the central government a stronger role over the semi-independent Serbian and Muslim-Croat entities. The talks were spearheaded by Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt, who used to be the first international high representative in Bosnia after the 1992-1995 war and is now chairing the EU presidency.

Despite wanting to see the office's powers downgraded, Mr Dodik strongly rejected the legislative package put forward by the EU-US mediators, saying it risked diluting the power of Republika Srpska. In the past years, he had repeatedly called for a referendum on separating from the Bosnian federation. As for the Bosniaks and Croats, they rejected the proposals for not going far enough in strengthening the state institutions. Under the 1995 Dayton peace accords, two separate entities were created - the Bosnian-Croat federation and Republika Srpska - linked by a common parliament, a three-member presidency and a council of ministers. However, the division of powers remains unclear, especially with the office of the international representative in place, and each side interprets it the way it suits best its own interests.

The European Commission (EC) last week gave a thumbs-up to Serbia's implementation of European standards on the road to EU membership and called on the Union to implement its Interim Trade Agreement with Serbia. Serbia signed the accord and the Stabilisation and Association Agreement with the EU in April 2008. Both agreements were suspended pending Serbia's full co-operation with The Hague tribunal. Currently, the only EU member blocking the Interim Trade Agreement is the Netherlands, which demands that fugitive Ratko Mladic be apprehended and extradited.

Serbia, however, still has some work to do. The country must take a more constructive stance on Kosovo, pass the Vojvodina Statute, combat corruption and crime, continue with judiciary reforms, enhance the rights of minorities, and help bring those that attack journalists, human rights activists and members of the gay and lesbian population to justice. Tomislav Nikolic, leader of the Serbian Progressive Party, also noted that European officials reprimanded Serbia's excessive budget spending, adding that if the trend continues, "Serbia will be heavily indebted with no advantage of becoming an EU member." Tanja Miscevic, head of the Serbian EU Integration Office from 2005 to 2008, also expressed restraint in assessing the report.

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Leaders of Bosnia's divided communities are meeting to try to end years of political stalemate and reduce the danger of renewed conflict.European Union and United States representatives are mediating the talks in Sarajevo. The aim is to bring in constitutional reform and prepare Bosnia for eventual EU and NATO membership. But the Bosnian Serbs strongly oppose any moves that would jeopardise their desire for more autonomy.

The high representative in Bosnia is an international figure with considerable domestic power. The current incumbent, Valentin Inzko, has described the situation in the country as serious. "Bosnia is in a state of paralysis," he told the BBC. "Things are not moving at the moment. And I deeply regret all this nationalist rhetoric. It's not helpful, it's destructive and many, many wars have started with bad rhetoric. So we should really avoid it."

Iceland this week appointed its chief EU accession negotiator, but the country's application is already hitting the buffers domestically and Brussels fears that the Arctic nation may "pull a Norway", meaning an application that the government is sincere about, but which the people strongly reject.

The country's finance minister, Steingrimur Sigfusson and leader of the government's junior coalition partner, the Left Green Movement, said last Tuesday at a meeting of the Nordic Council in Stockholm that while Iceland had applied to join, the people did not want to become members of the EU, a statement that has not been met with great enthusiasm in Brussels.

The European Commission has proposed setting aside €3.5 billion of regional, agriculture and administrative aid for Croatia's first two years of EU membership, provided the country manages to join the bloc in 2012. The earmarked sum still needs the approval of the 27 member states.

The commission proposal starts with the 'working hypothesis' that the former Yogoslav country will join the EU in "January 2012", based on the "overall progress" achieved so far in accession negotiations. Similar proposals were adopted in the pre-accession phase of the other 12 countries which joined in 2004 and 2007. The document only refers to 2012 and 2013, the last two years of the current seven-year EU budget. From 2014 onwards, Croatia will be part of the next multi-annual financial framework. During these two years, the bulk of the money - €2.3 billion in so-called structural funds – would go to local and regional projects in infrastructure and small and medium enterprises. Croatian farmers would receive some €680 million, while programmes involving the country's judiciary and police would get €170 million.

When the reform treaty was drafted, EU governments decided to expand the legislature from 736 to 751 members, so as to reflect the enlarged union. Elections for the current European Parliament took place in June, however, when the Lisbon Treaty's future was still uncertain following its rejection by referendum in Ireland. Some countries benefitting from the extra seats, such as Spain or Sweden, elected "reserve MEPs" who will take their observer status as soon as national governments take a decision on the matter. But others, notably France, did not. This complicates the matter even further, as they are now likely to send national parliamentarians as observers and hold early European elections for the extra seats once the legal basis for their full powers is in place.

Since the 1990s, the European Union (EU) has renewed its support for regional integration in other parts of the world, and incorporated this objective as a part of European external policy. Compared to the embryonic common foreign and security policy (CFSP), the support for regional integration and co-operation has been much less controversial, having been publicly endorsed by European Commission officials, and identified in the policy publications emanating from the various Directorate Generals (DGs). This article adopts a policy learning perspective to investigate this departure in external policy by the EU, and to identify the explanatory capacity of collective learning for the core beliefs, preferences, and policy instruments eventually adopted by European policy-makers. The article identifies what types of learning have taken place, and assesses the impact of learning on the policy outputs and outcomes.