Compared with their US equivalents, Europe’s places of higher education are truly the poor relations. The European Union spends 1.3 per cent of its gross domestic product on higher education, against 3.3 per cent of GDP in the US. That translates into an average €8,700 per student in the EU (minus Bulgaria and Romania), versus €36,500 in the US. It also explains why so few European universities match their US peers in terms of high-quality research output.

These and many other sobering details are contained in a new report, “Higher aspirations: An agenda for reforming European universities”, published this month by Bruegel, a Brussels-based think-tank. As the report says: “European growth has been disappointing for the past 30 years, remaining persistently lower than in the United States. There is now much evidence that this situation is closely linked to the state of innovation and higher education in Europe.”

Europe’s performance varies greatly, however, from country to country. Denmark, Sweden, the UK and Switzerland (which is outside the EU) are among the best. Some of the worst are in Italy and Spain, where universities tend to be poorly funded and packed with an average 40,000 students each.

What does the Bruegel report recommend? In a nutshell, more money, more autonomy and more competition. As far as money goes, the report professes to be neutral about whether the extra funding should be public or private or a mix of the two.

But it does point out that a lot more could be done in the area of donations and endowments: “Unleashing the generosity of private donors (individuals, firms or foundations) would constitute a dramatic change for the funding underpinnings of European higher education and research.”

On autonomy, the report says every university in Europe should have legal status, own assets, and have the freedom to hire staff, set their pay and decide their budgets. Excessive government involvement in these processes tends to be correlated with below-average uniiversity performance.

Finally, on competition, the report recommends that significant research funds - for individuals as well as departments - should be allocated competitively at regional, national and EU level.

These ideas aren’t necessarily new, but they still add up to a pretty convincing argument. One wonders if 10 years from now the picture in Europe will be any better.

José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president who wants to be reappointed next year to a second five-year term, has in recent days received two important but somewhat curious endorsements. The first was from Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, who has been sharply and publicly at odds with Barroso over the European Central Bank’s policies and over the European Commission’s handling of world trade negotiations.

The second was from Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s prime minister. The areas of potential or actual conflict between Italy and the EU are numerous to list here. But among them are Italian state aid to the near-bankrupt airline Alitalia, a rubbish collection crisis in Naples, and the treatment - or mistreatment - of Italy’s gypsy population.

To these one might add a warning from Berlusconi, issued on the eve of a summit of EU leaders in Brussels last month, about the European Commission. “We must no longer see public remarks by commissioners who create a lot of trouble for ministers [at national level],” he declared.

Barroso puts up with this needling from the likes of Berlusconi and Sarkozy because, if he wants the EU’s 27 government leaders to re-select him next year, he really has no choice. At the European Parliament there have been mutterings, even among the centre-right political forces to which Barroso belongs, that the former Portuguese prime minister should not be a shoo-in for reappointment.

Some legislators hold Barroso partly responsible for the two treaty crises that have dominated his term of office - the collapse of the EU constitutional treaty after the French and Dutch referendums of 2005, and the debacle of Ireland’s rejection last month of the Lisbon treaty.

Such accusations seem wildly unfair, but that’s politics for you. Barroso’s unofficial re-election campaign began to wobble after the Irish vote, but with the timely expressions of support from Sarkozy and Berlusconi it’s back on track - though at a political price we cannot yet know or calculate.

The European Union can hardly contain its pleasure at the arrest of Radovan Karadzic, the murderous Bosnian Serb leader who was picked up in Serbia on Monday after 11 years on the run. For all those who believe the best way to ensure long-term stability in former Yugoslavia is to accelerate Serbia’s path to EU membership, Karadzic’s arrest was cause for celebration. 

The arrest appears to vindicate the EU’s strategy over the past year of overtly supporting pro-EU political forces in Belgrade. The aim is twofold: to neutralise the militant nationalists who have poisoned Serbian public life for the past 20 years, and to persuade Serbian voters that their best hope of a decent future lies in aligning their country with the EU.

This strategy, so it is argued, helped secure victory in last February’s Serbian presidential election for Boris Tadic, the pro-EU incumbent. Likewise, the signing of an EU-Serbia pre-accession agreement in late April is said to have tipped the balance in favour of the pro-EU camp in Serbia’s parliamentary elections two weeks later.

The implementation of the pre-accession accord requires Serbia to be certified as being in full co-operation with the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Two war crimes suspects - Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb wartime general, and Goran Hadzic, the Krajina Serb leader - are still fugitives. But Karadzic’s arrest is an undeniable breakthrough and deserves a reward. It is not impossible that Serbia will be declared an official candidate for EU membership before the end of this year or in 2009.

Before the celebrations get out of hand, however, we need to recall that Serbia faces formidable obstacles on its road to the EU. One is its readiness in terms of economic performance, the rule of law and its ability to meet a vast range of EU technical standards.

Another concerns Kosovo, whose secession from Serbia and declaration of independence in February has been recognised by most EU countries but is rejected even by the most pro-EU politicians in Belgrade. The Serbia-Kosovo dispute is very far from settled. The EU will think twice before repeating the mistake it made with Cyprus in 2004 and admitting a country in advance of a solution to its internal political and territorial quarrels.

Lastly, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have stated flatly that further expansion of the EU is out of the question until the Lisbon treaty on institutional reform comes into effect. In other words, the door will be blocked to Serbia until Ireland reverses its rejection of the Lisbon treaty in last month’s referendum.

Putting pressure on an island in north-western Europe seems a curious way to go about promoting stability in south-eastern Europe. But perhaps for now we should just be happy that Karadzic is behind bars.

For those of you who missed Nicolas Sarkozy’s appearance last week at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, there are always YouTube and Dailymotion. In one revealing clip, the unforgettable 1968 student rebel Daniel Cohn-Bendit, now a Green MEP, is shown berating the French president for his decision to attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

The tieless, slightly crumpled Cohn-Bendit waves his arms about, jabs his fingers and slices his hands through the air. Sarkozy, immaculate in a dark suit, remains seated, listening carefully, his fingers caressing a pen.

In response to Cohn-Bendit’s accusation that he has gone soft on China over human rights, Sarkozy starts by teasing his opponent: “Mr Cohn-Bendit, I know how generous you are. You’ve never been stingy with advice, especially advice for me.” Then the president makes the killer point: “You can’t boycott a quarter of humanity.”

It is a startling thought that Cohn-Bendit, at the age of 63, is 10 years older than Sarkozy and worse dressed. But the real lesson from last Thursday’s political theatre is that Sarkozy is capable of sheer brilliance under pressure.

He had just flown halfway round the world from the G8 summit in Japan, but in Strasbourg he delivered a long speech - having discarded his prepared text - and then answered questions from various MEPs for well over three hours. By the end, Hans-Gert Pöttering, the European Parliament president, wasn’t the only legislator eating out of Sarkozy’s hand.

One senior French official told Sarkozy it was his most impressive performance since he won the French presidency in May 2007. Of course, that was three days before he hosted more than 40 European, North African and Middle Eastern leaders in Paris at a summit that launched a new platform for co-operation in the Mediterranean region. 

That meeting, fraught with risks, went pretty well, too. After a wobble at the start of France’s six-month EU presidency, when he went too far in attacking the European Central Bank and the European Commission’s trade policies, Sarkozy is getting attention for the right reasons. 

Not long ago, I spent some time with a Romanian socialist member of the European Parliament called Adrian Severin. He is an impressive figure. He is not only a former Romanian foreign minister (1996-97) but also - according to his official CV - the proud recipient of the “Man of the 20th Century Award”. This, in case you didn’t know, is a distinction conferred by the International Biographical Centre, which is something based in the English university city of Cambridge.

Severin was talking to me just after Irish voters said No to the European Union’s Lisbon treaty in their June 12 referendum. What he said has stuck in my mind ever since. “There are countries without which the EU cannot function, and countries without which it can,” he pronounced.

For example, he went on, the EU could do without Ireland, but not without France and the Netherlands (which, you’ll remember, voted No to the EU’s now abandoned constitutional treaty in 2005).  And what was the difference between Ireland and the Netherlands? I asked. “Geography,” Severin replied.

I suppose he meant that Ireland is on the periphery of Europe and the Netherlands is, well, a bit closer to the centre. Anyway, he seemed very keen to teach the Irish a lesson or two about what it means to be a good European.

What about Romania itself, though? Is Romania, which joined the EU in January 2007, one of those countries the EU can do without, or cannot do without?

On July 23 we may get some answers to that question. That is the day when the European Commission is due to publish its long-awaited report into Romania’s efforts to meet EU standards on judicial reform and rooting out corruption in public life.

Last November Willem de Pauw, a Belgian prosecutor and adviser to the EU on Romanian affairs, wrote a report (dug up by the Economist magazine) that said: “Instead of progress in the fight against high-level corruption, Romania is presently regressing on all fronts in the fight against corruption.” De Pauw spoke of “the intense resistance of practically the whole political class of Romania against the anti-corruption effort”.

Next time Severin goes to Dublin and tells the Irish they’re a country the EU can do without, he might like to take along a copy of Willem de Pauw’s report.

Just read the latest version of Sarko’s “European pact on immigration“.

To recap, this is his plan for European countries to bring their immigration policies closer together. EU interior ministers broadly backed the measure at their meeting in Cannes on Monday.

But it’s hard to see how the pact - which has already been watered down - will actually change things.

At heart, the plan (which isn’t legally binding)  calls for improved frontier controls, effective removal of illegal entrants and better organisation of legal immigration. Sure - but the EU has said this sort of stuff on multiple occasions.

Yes, the union has made strides on common rules, for example abandoning internal border controls across much of Europe and agreeing to harmonise asylum standards.

Yet progress on unified immigration policies is often slow and becomes mired in spats between member states. 

Immigration is one of the most nebulous topics here in Europeville, with differences in countries’ geographic, demographic and economic situations making agreement on common rules tricky, to say the least.

These factors, and varying traditions and political stances towards immigration, complicate matters yet further.  For example, the EU has tried for ages to agree on a “bluecard” scheme to attract skilled workers, but has yet to succeed.

Sarko owes his election victory last year in part to his tough stance on immigration. However, France’s own domestic proposal to establish immigration quotas is in disarray after an independent commission set up to look at the question concluded that they were unworkable.

And the French president may yet find that progress on his goals for Europe is slower and more cloudy than hoped.

Question: What do the European Central Bank, EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson, French army commanders, French public television broadcasters, the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia and Snagglepuss the Mountain Lion have in common? Answer: they have all come under withering attack in the past week or two from President Nicolas Sarkozy of France.

Actually, Snagglepuss hasn’t, but Sarkozy has sprayed his ammunition so far and wide that it was probably a close-run thing. It would be easy to dismiss the presidential antics - imagine Silvio Berlusconi on speed and you are halfway there - as a huge embarrassment for France just as it started its six-month European Union presidency on July 1. But I reckon there is a great deal of method in Sarkozy’s madness.

What I suspect he is up to is seeking to exploit a weakness in the human brain known to specialists as “source amnesia”. As Professor Sam Wang and Sandra Aamodt explained in a recent article, we store facts first in the hippocampus, a finger-shaped structure deep in the brain and then, after much re-storing and reprocessing, transfer them to the cerebral cortex. But after a while, facts are separated from the context in which we learned them. It becomes hard for us to remember whether certain statements are true. Even things we once knew to be lies can be erroneously recalled, months later, as truths.

I am not saying Sarkozy is deliberately feeding lies to the European public. But if you consider his spirited attacks this week on the ECB’s monetary policy and Mandelson’s tactics in the Doha world trade talks, he is surely calculating that if you repeat something long enough and loudly enough, a good number of people will start believing you, even if at first they disagreed.

Whether this will improve Sarkozy’s chances of stopping a rise in ECB interest rates or getting a better deal for French farmers in the Doha round remains to be seen. Not for the moment, it would seem.

Pierre-Luc Séguillon, the veteran French political journalist, puts it neatly. He says “President Bling-Bling”, the Sarkozy of celebrity friendships, large wristwatches, fancy sunglasses and Carla Bruni, has morphed into “President Biff-Baff”, Sarkozy the confrontational politician unafraid to say the unsayable. As for the rest of Europe’s leaders, some are no doubt praying that German chancellor Angela Merkel will have a quiet word in his ear to calm him down.