Nothing changes, it seems. Just like 2008, 2009 promises to bring yet more Russian sabre-rattling and European fears about the continent’s long-term energy security.

Also time to welcome in the Czech EU presidency. With the Czech Republic currently being run by the neoliberal, eurosceptic Civic Democratic Party of President Václav Klaus and Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek – a party that’s already begun to align itself with Declan Ganley’s new anti-Lisbon Treaty Libertas movement – it could prove an interesting six months.

With the EU still stuck in a deadlock until the Irish question is sorted, will Klaus – increasingly a hero of the eurosceptic right EU-wide thanks to his repeated anti-EU pronouncements (even calling for the EU to be scrapped altogether back in 2005) – be able to use his elevated position over the next six months to advance the eurosceptic cause?

Substantive posts soon, honest. I’ve got a real-world deadline for the 5th, though, so need to prioritise.

Better luck next time, Ukraine.

One of these days the EU powers that be are going to realise that when you’ve got countries torn between a European and non-European identity, to keep on telling them “sorry, you’re not European enough yet” is just going to drive them into the other camp.

How much longer are the likes of Ukraine and Turkey going to put up with these repeated, very public rejections before heading off to the waiting embrace of Moscow or non-secular Islamism?

If I were a westwards-looking Ukrainian, I’d be getting very pissed off about now:

Ukraine will have to make do with an “association agreement” with the EU, a pact that for Balkan countries such as Albania, Macedonia and Serbia represents the first step on the path to membership, but for Ukraine carries no such implications

So Ukraine’s less welcome than tiny Albania and Macedonia? Less welcome than Serbia, a country built on a genocidal civil war and still in dispute with much of the EU over the status of Kosovo?

Yeah, cheers for that. Really encouraging. Nice one.

The promise of future EU membership can be a force for good, inspiring positive shifts towards greater democratic freedoms. But the promise has to be made. Taking a carrot and stick approach is a tried-and-tested method for getting people to do what you want – and that goes for countries too. Yet in the case of Ukraine, the EU’s carrot would appear to be largely imaginary – while at the same time, Ukrainians know that Russia has both stick and carrot, and isn’t afraid to use either.

Ukraine’s Orange Revolution was always painted (in the western media, at least) as a conflict between western-looking Yushchenko and the eastern-looking former Prime Minister Yanukovich, the man whose suspect election to the presidency sparked popular protests and an eventual turnaround back in November 2004. Yushchenko was, it is alleged, the target of an assassination plot backed by Moscow, while Yanukovich was merely backed by Moscow. When the Revolution got its way and Yushchenko came to power, it seemed the West had won.

But it was never going to be that simple, or that easy. After countless disputes between Ukraine’s various political factions over the last four years, another post-Orange Revolution government is nearing collapse thanks to yet another spat between former Orange allies President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko – and all as the aftermath of the Georgia crisis continues to rumble with the US handing Saakashvili a tidy $1 billion in reconstruction money (otherwise known as a fiscal two fingers to Moscow), and Russia announces a review of its global trade relations. Although the EU may account for 31% of Ukraine’s export market, Russia makes up 21% – and after the various spats over gas supplies over the last couple of years, you can be sure that Ukrainians are somewhat worried about just what Moscow may have planned to reassert the influence she lost with the fall of former President Kuchma back in 2004.

And so it would appear that the spread of the Georgia standoff does indeed seem likely to spread to Ukraine.

The thing is, though, that even without the squabbles between the various political leaders, the position of Ukraine was never going to be resolved by a simple election. Did Yanukovich try to steal the election back in 2004? Quite possibly. But that still doesn’t alter the fact that the country’s vote was split almost exactly down the middle.

Of course, it’s easy to label this an East vs West thing, and that’s part of it. But the actual reason is cultural and linguistic. Ukraine’s just like Belgium, in fact. The parallels are painfully evident:

You see, just as Belgium has a north/south split between Flemish and French speakers, so too it has a north/south political divide. And in Ukraine, there’s a northwest/southeast split between majority Ukrainian speakers and Russian speakers, echoed in political support for the “west-leaning” Yushchenko/Orange Revolution in the northwest and “pro-Russia” Yanukovich in the southeast.

So, why does Ukraine have the borders that she does? They’re a fairly recent creation, after all – with the origins of Ukraine lying in the medieval Kievan Rus’, which stretched north from Kiev through modern Belarus and Poland to the Baltic, not south and east to the Black Sea. It went on to be absorbed into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (covering much the same area – but again missing out the south and east of modern Ukraine, which was part of the Crimean Khanate, before being sucked into the similarly vast Kingdom of Poland via the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Check the maps below (very rough, I know) charting Ukraine’s geographical history up to the 19th century (when it was absorbed by the Russian Empire) – notice something?

Yep – that’s right. The Russian-speaking, Yanukovich-voting part of modern Ukraine was not, historically, part of Ukraine – it’s a later addition tacked on during the Russian Empire. During the chaotic times following the Russian revolution and around the Ukrainian War of Independence of 1919, the northwest that tried to break away as a Ukrainian state (actually, several Ukrainian states, after repeated failures to consolidate their position), while the southeast (briefly) went its own way as the Crimean People’s Republic. It was really only under the Soviets – who took the Tsars’ attempts to crush the Crimean Tatars and put down Ukranian nationalism (especially after the Second World War, where Ukrainian nationalists fought both the Russians and the Germans, depending on who was occupying the area at the time, in a campaign that lasted until 1956) to the usual near-genocidal extremes – that Ukraine’s current borders began to be fixed. In fact, you can even put a precise date on it – 19th February 1954, the day the Crimean Oblast was transferred to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

So here’s the question. If northwestern Ukraine is the linguistic, cultural and historical hub of the Ukrainian people, and southwestern Ukraine has only been spliced on within living memory, why persist with the pretense that the current borders of the modern Ukrainian state are actually meaningful? They were created by the Soviet Union as a handy administrative division, not based on any of the usual factors that go into the creation of a coherent state. Artificial borders have, time and again, led to conflict and division – be it via European colonialism in Africa or the carving up of the Middle East after the First World War.

If Ukraine really is torn between east and west, in other words – and it is – and if its artificial makeup keeps leading to political stalemate and unrest – and it does – isn’t the logical thing to do to follow the Belgian example and consider splitting the country down the middle? (This would also, one hopes, have the added benefit of shutting Russia up for a while as she regains part of her old sphere of influence – and enable the EU to focus on the more “European” northwest for development and eventual integration.)

Am I serious about this as a suggestion? It’s about 50/50 at the moment. But the longer Ukraine goes without forming a stable government, the more likely an outcome this will be…

So, what is it going to be, exactly? A military response isn’t an option, and Moscow knows it – though quite how far they can push before getting shoved back in return we don’t yet know (Georgia may be strategically important, but isn’t yet a member of NATO; the same goes for Ukraine; but what about Estonia, with it’s sizable population of ethnic Russians and history of tensions with its larger neighbour? We’re all meant to fight for EU and NATO member Estonia – but if push did come to shove, would we?) Economic sanctions are unlikely to have much impact when Russia has such a tight grip of the European energy market and can hurt us far more than we can hurt them. We also can’t risk ceasing to trade with Moscow as winter approaches and Russian gas supplies become ever more vital – whereas they can do without European markets, if necessary.

But one thing is clear – if Europe’s strategy remains unclear, Russia’s seems to have failed. If the aim of the Georgia expedition was, as many have assumed, to reintroduce Moscow’s will to the Western periphery of the Russian Federation, then finally pushing Poland into the arms of the Americans was certainly not the desired result. Especially when Ukraine – that other nascent nation with a history of troubles and a sizeable Russian population on the Eurasian border that some have pointed to as “Russia’s next target” swiftly follows suit.

But still, I’m not sure I buy this whole “extending influence” thing. Not only does Russia seem to have hardened the anti-Moscow attitudes of the old Warsaw Pact EU member states (including among the people, many of whom have, in ex-Soviet countries, had a tendency for rosy nostalgia for the days of communism), but also pushed Ukraine further westwards, and potentially gained Georgia the NATO seat she wanted even though Tbilisi’s recent actions show that the country’s really not ready yet.

But that’s not all. Russia’s also singularly failed to maintain control over Chechnya despite years of fighting, and has even found the conflict spreading into neighbouring parts of the Caucasus – as well as to the Russian capital itself. In Georgia, rather than a disciplined and efficient military manoeuvre, we’ve seen poor targeting, poor discipline, and a seeming lack of ability to decide what the hell to do – having pushed in to Georgian territory and taken Gori, the Russians seem largely to have been milling around trying to look macho for the last week or two, while seemingly ignoring presidential orders. This is, it seems, what you get from a conscript army.

So, when we come to look back on this in a few months’ time, what will Moscow have achieved? Well, she may be able to gain a bit more influence in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, but those two regions hold little of any strategic value (bar Abkhazia’s apparently rather beautiful stretches of Black Sea coastline). Georgia will continue to be the non-Russian route of choice for Central Asian oil and gas to Europe – only now, undoubtedly, with a far stronger western military presence to guard the infrastructure. Georgia’s chances of NATO membership will have been greatly increased, as will those of Ukraine. The significance of energy dependence on Russia will also have become far more apparent to a far wider group of people (the reason we need to develop alternate energy sources is not global warming, folks, it’s Gazprom…) The threat of Russian instability – long largely ignored by many in the West, desperately hoping that Putin was one of us despite his authoritarian ways – will have become clear. But it should also have become clear that Russia’s army really isn’t much of a threat. A few ill-trained teenagers with battered equipment can cause some short-term chaos, certainly – they can maim and kill and loot and burn as well as anyone. But even supported with tanks, I’m not convinced of the threat of the Russian army any more – or of the minds coming up with Russian strategy. It’s still early days, but as NATO plans its longer-term response this whole escapade is beginning to look like it’s backfired on Moscow.

So, what’s the next step? Well, having been slow to act to the initial violence, the best bet for Europe/NATO is probably to sit back and wait to see what the next move from Moscow is going to be, because they’ve probably already started to realise their mistake. For NATO or the EU to suddenly come out with some hasty, highly public punitive measures is likely to spark further escalation as Moscow seeks to save face.

I can’t see too much direct Russian intervention in Ukraine – bar the usual behind-the-scenes funding – as long as Ukraine’s politicians continue their ridiculous infighting (that’s been going on ever since the damp squib that was the Orange Revolution back in November 2004), as a divided Ukraine is very much in Russia’s interests, something that can be exploited while the West sits back and waits for them to resolve their differences. The most likely option is a revival of the old plan to merge Belarus with Russia – a project that’s been on-off, on-off for years now, and which Russia has previously been the reluctant party to – not worth much to Moscow in real terms (Belarus has little to offer economically), but psychologically important, almost completely cutting off the Baltic states, and giving Russia a border only 150 kilometres from Warsaw.

But how do you second-guess Russia? Moscow doesn’t think like governments in the West. At least, we don’t think they do. Because no one really seems to know what Russia’s up to. We can’t even tell who the next head of state is going to be until they tell us, after all. There are countless conspiracy theories about what Russia’s plan is – from shadowy groups of ex-KGB men plotting a global takeover to shadowy groups of ultracapitalist gangsters trying to wring as much money out of everyone as possible – and none of them are entirely convincing.

The old question “cock-up or conspiracy” should always be met with the answer “cock-up” until you’re presented with some very compelling evidence to the contrary. Russia’s Georgia escapade looks rather like it was designed to be a conspiracy, but it’s one they so far appear to have cocked up. A plan designed to show Russia as strong, powerful, and capable of decisive action has, instead, shown her to be incapable and pushed those she was wooing even further into the opposing camp. This Georgia episode has shown that Putin’s old tough guy act is just that. Russia’s prepared to bully those littler than her, but wouldn’t be able to hack it in a real fight. (Not that I’m advocating getting into a real fight with Russia, obviously – in this case, the best response to the bully is probably to pretend to ignore her while sniggering a bit to make sure she knows we didn’t miss her failure… The embarrassment may just be enough to stop her from trying it again – because image does seem to be everything to this lot.)

Hunting around for a handy overview of just what’s been happening at the NATO Summit in Bucharest, depending on who you read you’ll get some wildly different ideas. I’ve been confused for much of the morning. Here’s a brief indication of why:

Der Spiegel‘s “Germany Puts the Brakes on US Expansion Plans” is countered by the International Herald Tribune‘s “NATO backs U.S. missile defense plan for Europe”

EU Referendum‘s claim that “NATO has thrown Ukraine and Georgia to the bear. President Bush’s attempts to put them on track to future and very distant membership of NATO has failed” is then contradicted by Radio Free Europe‘s report that “pro-NATO forces in Ukraine and Georgia celebrated the announcement, which offered stronger-than-expected support for their entry bids”

Repeat for pretty much every issue under discussion at the summit (for which, see this very handy round-up).

People always like to look for tangible, obvious outcomes from these things. But this is international diplomacy. Worse than that, it’s strategic military international diplomacy where all but one of the permanent members of the UN’s Security Council are involved (and we know how infrequently that lot manage to get along). Making compromises left, right and centre – leading to a stalemate in which, well, the status quo has largely been maintained – was the only sensible course of action. The thing was always going to end up a waste of time and money.

But the real fun is that despite the fact that NATO is now overseeing operations in Afghanistan (that well-known North Atlantic power) and looking to a more global role, this summit has made one thing increasingly apparent: the Cold War may have ended, but NATO’s principal opponent remains Russia.

Pretty much every compromise on the European front, every bit of backing down, appears to have been done to placate the Kremlin – because the principle areas to which NATO is looking to expand its influence (largely under the prompting of the US) lie in former communist countries, be it Ukraine and Georgia or Croatia and Albania.

As you’ve no doubt noticed, there’s been a growing tension between Russia and the West in recent years – from ex-FSB men assassinated in London to the resumption of patrols by Russian nuclear bombers through the vendetta against the British Council in Moscow. Then there’s the war of words with Belarus, Europe’s oft-forgotten fanatically pro-Moscow wildcard (a country that misses the USSR so much its secret police are still called the KGB and there are constant rumours that it is planning to formally merge with Russia), cyber-warfare against Estonia, and the ongoing standoff over Kosovo’s independence. Even the EU’s (and NATO’s) difficult relationship with Turkey is getting caught up with the Russian situation thanks to the Russo-Turkish partnership in the Bluestream and Nabucco pipelines, both of which are helping to make Europe increasingly reliant on Russian energy supplies.

The relationship with Russia, in other words, increasingly seems to dominate all European diplomacy. Where during the Cold War the presence of the USSR may have ensured that western Europe and the EU was operating under the constant fear of nuclear attack, Moscow’s then lack of engagement in western European affairs allowed everyone to get on much as they pleased. Since the end of the Cold War – and especially since Putin came to power – Moscow’s long-sought-after engagement with the West has if anything caused even more problems.

During the Cold War it was America who stood guard and kept watch, now Europe (both the EU and non-EU countries) has to be constantly on the alert for far more subtle Russian encroachments than columns of Red Army troops or falling H-bombs – encroachments largely economic, and mostly achieved through that strange form of diplomacy at which Putin so excels: smiling with fangs.

With such a large, unpredictable neighbour to the east – especially one with the ability to shut down a sizable chunk of the European economy on a whim (as has already happened to Ukraine) – little wonder there seem to have been few major advances at this latest NATO summit. In fact, I can barely see the point of holding these things until Russian attitudes to the West shift further in the direction of friendly cooperation (no signs of that any time soon) – because Russia’s never going to accept public humiliation, which is how the current regime seems to see any kind of outside involvement in what remains of the bear’s sphere of influence.

So the real points of interest after such standoffs between Russia and the West are never going to be the big issues. We’re not suddenly going to have a Kremlin change of heart on any of the major issues any time soon. And if and when such a change of heart comes, it’s certainly not going to come at one of these big public summits – far too humiliating. Where such shifts in Russian attitudes – either pro-engagement or heading towards hostility – are first going to be seen is in the details. The precise wording, the precise terms of any diplomatic agreement between Russia and the EU, US, NATO or individual European countries – the small print that the journalists rarely have time to scan in their rush to hit deadlines and get an angle that gives the subs a good shot at an interesting headline – that’s where we’ll first spot the changes when they come.

These summits are, in other words, little better than MacGuffins. The real diplomacy is going on off the radar, with lots of little standoffs in places like Armenia, Moldova, Azerbaijan and Central Asia.

NATO may well be starting to look globally – but Europe needs to do the same to keep tabs on just what its unpredictable neighbour is up to, because Russia has more ability than any other state to screw Europe over. If Russia’s got its fingers in a lot of pies, we need to be keeping an eye on all of them, and not get distracted by the occasional fuss over the more obvious ones like Ukraine and Georgia (both of which have had high-profile popular pro-democracy uprisings in recent years, which are always of appeal to the press). To do so would be to fall for the oldest trick in the book.

…and Russia’s energy blackmail steps up once again, with Ukraine’s gas supplies being cut by a quarter by Gazprom. The energy giant headed by, erm… one Dmitry Medvedev.

Yay!

My big worry over Gazprom boss Dmitry Medvedev becoming president of Russia is his use of the country’s gas supplies as political weapons. Because we all know that’s what’s really going on with the current dispute with Ukraine – a revival of previous spats, and due to come to a head some time this afternoon, when the deadline runs out and Gazprom plans to cut off a quarter of Ukraine’s gas.

How do we know? Well why would Ukraine’s president be holding talks with Russia’s president if this is a dispute between a commercial organisation and a state, rather than two states? And do you think that Ukraine’s recent invitation to join the WTO and negotiations to join NATO are really unrelated?

Expect to see much more of this sort of thing over the next few years – especially now that Russia’s done a deal with Serbia to control the southern pipeline route into Europe…

Handy background from Ukraine blog Foreign Notes: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

More: EuroNews, International Herald Tribune, Radio Free Europe, AFP, Reuters, Le Figaro (FR), Les Echos (FR)

We all remember the Orange Revolution of late 2004. Regular readers will know that since liveblogging the thing, I’ve occasionally returned to the complex and heated world of Ukranian politics to try and work out just what the hell’s going on over there – and more often than not, what’s been going on is petty squabbling, infighting, broken alliances, team-ups with former enemies, disillusionment and political stalemate. Wikipedia has a good round-up of the events of the last few months.

The latest development? Only the banning of the main opposition party. It’s just the newest madness after months of political stagnation caused by the fracturing of the old Orange alliance of President Yushchenko and his “revolutionary” partner Yulia Tymoshenko (his erstwhile Prime Minister), and the return of Viktor Yanukovich to the office of Prime Minister.

To recap, Yanukovich was the guy the Orange Revolution was set up to oppose after Yushchenko’s supporters claimed Yanukovich’s lot had rigged the presidential elections (Yanukovich was also rumoured to have been involved in the alleged pre-election poisoning plot that so disfigured Yuschenko’s face). He also has the support of pretty much 50% of the population.

Yep – Yanukovich is not just some random despot, as much of the Western media made out during the Orange Revolution, but a genuinely popular leader who speaks for a sizeable chunk of the population. The country is one utterly divided between two parties with very different ideologies, balanced on a knife-edge even finer than that that splits the Democrats and republicans in the United States.

Or, at least, it used to be between two main parties, but since the Orange Revolution a newcomer has emerged – the fluffy-looking BYuT, or “Bloc Yulia Tymoshenko”. With a heart straight off a Valentine’s Day card as its symbol, and with the best-looking former Prime Minister in the world as the almost messianic leader of its cult of personality, BYuT may lean ideologically closer to Yuschenko than to Yanukovich, but Tymoshenko’s recent refusal to play ball with the president despite their earlier Orange Revolution alliance has ensured that her new party has effectively become Ukraine’s kingmaker. In fact, based on the last parliamentary elections, it may well even have eclipsed the old “Our Ukraine” bloc that led the Orange Revolution, and with which Yushchenko is most closely associated. Tymoshenko, at any rate, has been keen to portray herself as the true heir to the early promise of the Orange Revolution.

Which is, of course, no good at all to current Prime Minister Yanukovich – hence his arranging this weekend for Tymoshenko’s party to be blocked from participating in the upcoming parliamentary elections. Due to BYuT’s current popularity, that’s effectively the equivalent of Gordon Brown arranging for the Conservative party to be banned a month or so before a general election, or George Bush blocking the Democrats before the midterms.

Yes, it’s unlikely that Yanukovich’s lot will succeed in keeping Tymoshenko’s people off the ballot paper (although there’s only a week to sort this), but that’s not the point – it’s the fact that such a blatantly dodgy move would even be tried in a country that is not only a member of the Council of Europe but also one of the EU’s closest eastern neighbours (as well as a strategically vital region for European energy supplies thanks to the various pipelines that run through Ukraine from Russia).

In other words, for the EU to maintain its pretence of standing for the advancement of democracy and human rights, this latest bit of dodgy political manoeuvring by Yanukovich’s bloc needs to be condemned utterly and immediately in the strongest possible terms, quite probably with a few threats of heavy sanctions to back the thing up.

Of course, there is the danger that, as it’s more in the EU’s interest for Tymoshenko’s party to gain power than for Yanukovich to maintain his hold, this could be seen as an attempt to influence the elections (with Russia being a prime candidate to complain, being a keen supporter of Yanukovich), but still.

Ukraine is simply too important a neighbour to just sit back and ignore – yet that is what the EU has largely been happy to do for much of the last few years, despite it becoming increasingly apparent that Ukraine is in the midst of a major identity crisis that could well have major implications for the stability of Europe’s eastern border.

Sod the strange position of Transdniester – it’s not inconceivable that, left unchecked, this rumbling political crisis could lead to the splitting of Ukraine itself. If that were to happen, the potential for a major Russo-European clash over influencing the wreckage would be very high indeed.

Les Fatales Picards are a work of absolute genius. That bald guy – perfect! Sadly no cheerleaders during the live finals, but still. Fantastic stuff – they’ve single-handedly revived my interest in pop music:

Update: Actually, sod that – maybe Ukraine… Genius also (though in a rather more contrived way, for which I’ll deduct points – France still my favourites…):

Update 2: But more importantly, why the hell is the German entry all about ruling the world? Should we be getting nervous? (And unless my ears deceived me, in their appeal for votes they said something along the lines of “we conquered you…” Erm…)

Update 3: The German entry’s lyrics. It IS all about ruling the world! Or maybe Angela Merkel. I’m not sure any more…

It’s not just in Ukraine that things are happening. All around Europe’s eastern fringe, people seem to have become a tad unsettled by the onset of Spring.

In fact, the most stable country on Europe’s eastern edge seems to be Turkey, where the economy is booming and EU accession talks are still going on despite all the setbacks last year. The South East European Times has a tip-top overview of the issues and state of play.

A bit north, and Romanian Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu is expected to form a new coalition, having dissolved his unstable government – Edward Lucas is good on how, why, and what the chances are that the new government will be stable, and notes

The government crisis has come just before Romania reports to the EU on its progress. The European Commission will publish its own assessment in June. It is unlikely to trigger the safeguard clauses that allow Brussels to cut aid and stop co-operation with Bulgaria and Romania if either starts backsliding. But it will make uncomfortable reading.

Further north, Estonia’s also just got a new coalition – albeit a a rather more stable one – this year’s elections are the first time since Estonia gained independence in 1991 that voters have seen fit to grant a Prime Minister a second term in office. Britain, take note…

Further north again, it seems Lithuania could soon be following, as the ruling party looks set to dissolve parliament and call elections 15 months early.

Meanwhile, Latvia is also looking a bit unstable, with referenda on the cards following the government’s attempts to introduce somewhat dodgily authoritarian-sounding “emergency security measures”, which would, according to a leading opponent, “open the door to very serious political manipulation… and, ultimately, influence by the so-called oligarchs, which would be very dangerous”. Fun fun fun… (Sounds rather like the UK – which is actually worse off, as it’s now illegal to dispute government policy even within parliament…)

Poland, too, is looking increasingly odd, as Jon Worth notes (with more at the Economist’s excellent new Europe blog). And that’s before you even get started on the highly controversial new law (which came into effect a couple of weeks ago) requiring the best part of 700,000 civil servants, teachers and journalists to sign an oath stating whether or not they collaborated with the secret services prior to the collapse of communism back in 1989. Anyone who lies is set to be fired – a bizarre, McCarthyite step for a country in which the question “are you or have you ever been a member of the communist party” is going to be met with a “yes” from just about everyone over the age of 35…

And in Bulgaria there are likewise signs that all is not right, as the recent arrest of Turkmen dissident Annadurdy Hadjiev seems to show. Hardly the sort of support for free speech and democracy we’d all like to see… There are also ongoing concerns about Bulgarian attitudes to the Roma minority, and Brussels is not at all happy about the progress being made in the fight against corruption and organised crime. Still, that at least plays well for the Bulgarian eurosceptics, who are trying to build support – but Bulgarians all seem to hate their politicians anyway, so I doubt they’ll get far…

Thankfully, Hungary at least is looking a bit more promising, with a new coalition just about to settle into place following recent internal party elections to help stabilise the government, following last year’s riots and unrest caused by the surprising admission from Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany that he deliberately lied to the electorate.

And while all this is going on, Europe’s nuttiest country – the dotty dictatorship of Belarus – is still refusing to meet the conditions required for it to rejoin the Council of Europe – you know, like commitments to basic levels of human rights, democracy, not beating up your political opponents, that kind of thing. But hell – why bother sucking up to Europe when Vladimir Putin’s more than happy to be friends with you? In fact, going by the talk of Russia and Belarus “forming a common economic space, customs union, free labour market, common information, educational and cultural environment”, it sounds almost like a new-style, EU-inspired USSR may be on the cards in the East. Intriguing – and potentially very dangerous to the EU’s economic stability…