Carbon prices drop sharply after Copenhagen (Chris Flood, FT)
Croatia, Turkey, one step closer to EU membership (Toby Vogel, European Voice)
The US State department on the Lisbon treaty (Nosemonkey)
The joke’s on EU: a cartoon history of the European Union (The Independent)
The Brussels blog is taking a break and will return during the week of January 4.
Greece sees few glimmers of hope (Patrick Jenkins and Kerin Hope, FT)
Council staff announce strike (European Voice)
I want to be a farmer, says Lord Mandelson (Andrew Sparrow, The Guardian)
MEPs pay rise takes salary to £86,000 (Bruno Waterfield, Daily Telegraph)
Seen from continental Europe, one of the biggest questions of 2010 concerns David Cameron, leader of the UK’s opposition Conservative party. The Tories are widely expected to win the forthcoming British election, but few European Union politicians can claim with confidence to know where he truly stands on the all-important matter of Britain’s relationship with the EU.
The lack of clarity isn’t helped by the Tories’ distant relationship with their fellow EU centre-right parties. I am in Bonn at a congress of the European People’s Party, the leading centre-right party group. Everyone who matters is here: Germany’s Angela Merkel, Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, Herman Van Rompuy (the newly appointed full-time EU president)… Countries from Malta to Latvia and Georgia to Croatia are represented. But there are no Conservative party politicians at all here – not Cameron, not William Hague, his shadow foreign secretary, not Kenneth Clarke, the only authentically pro-EU voice in the shadow cabinet.
What a magnificent example of “splendid isolation” – what childishness. And what makes the Tories’ absence all the more extraordinary is that a majority of the speakers at the EPP congress are speaking in English.
In the absence of direct contacts with the Tories, the EPP’s leaders and strategists could do worse than look at a new report on Cameron and the EU published today by the Centre for European Reform, the London-based think-tank. It paints Cameron as a force for moderation on European issues within his party, observing: “Though a eurosceptic of sorts, he is a pragmatist rather than an ideologue and he sees that the British national interest requires constructive engagement with EU partners. Cameron needs to be supported against those who wish to provoke a crisis in Britain’s relationship with the EU.”
I am sure this is true, but if I were a political leader in mainland Europe I would feel sorely tempted to ask myself: “But what is Cameron going to offer me? Where is he proposing to meet me halfway?” Accepting that the EU’s Lisbon treaty is here to stay, as he did last month, is nothing like enough.
Once in power, there is much that Cameron could contribute in a positive sense to shaping the EU’s future. He could put forward ideas for improving the EU’s long-term economic competitiveness, combining a strategy for economic growth with a dedication to fighting climate change. He could press forward on the important issue of European security and defence policy, recognising that this will do much to determine Europe’s relative weight in the world. He could hold aloft the banner of EU enlargement.
If other EU leaders are to support Cameron against the anti-EU elements in his party and country, it will be up to him to offer something in return.
Is it Islamophobia, ignorance, a crisis of European identity, a problem of a poorly integrated minority community, or something of all of these?
According to an opinion poll published in today’s Le Soir , one of Belgium’s leading newspapers, some 59.3 per cent of Belgians support a ban on the construction of new minarets in their country. This is about 2 per cent more than the proportion of Swiss who voted in a referendum last month to halt the building of new minarets.
The Belgian survey cannot lay claim to pinpoint accuracy. It was conducted by iVOX, an online pollster, which estimates the margin of error at 3.1 per cent. Nevertheless, the outcome doesn’t come as a surprise. Like Switzerland, Belgium has a small but steadily growing Muslim population – and not many minarets.
To be precise, there are 328 mosques in Belgium but only 16 minarets. Let me assure you, the skylines of Brussels, Ghent and Namur do not look anything like the skylines of Mecca or Istanbul. I would wager that most of the Belgians who spoke out in the opinion poll against new minarets have never seen a minaret in their neighbourhood.
Interestingly, a similar survey conducted in France just after the Swiss referendum pointed to a somewhat lower level of hostility to Islam. The poll in Le Figaro said 41 per cent of those questioned were opposed to new minarets in France. A separate poll suggested that a majority of French people did not think a referendum on banning new minarets was a good idea.
So common sense has not entirely deserted the people of Europe. But as we see with the increasing difficulties facing Turkey’s European Union membership negotiations, questions of culture, identity and Christianity in opposition to Islam are starting to fill the vacuum in European politics created by the collapse of secular ideologies and allegiances such as socialism and anti-communism.
Are there any politicians in Europe courageous enough to point out what a dangerous course this risks becoming?
By Stefan Wagstyl, eastern Europe editor
Small European countries generally make international news only when they get into trouble, as crisis-hit Latvia has found to its cost.
With 22m people Romania is not small by European standards, but it is poor and far removed from the European Union’s heartlands.
It last made global headlines when the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown 20 years ago. Now Romania risks returning to the front pages if its leaders don’t sort out its crisis-linked economic difficulties. The problem is not the economy per se – Romania has an International Monetary Fund/European Union rescue programme and a range of proposed reforms to go with it.
The problem is politics. The leaders are hopelessly split. On Sunday, president Traian Basescu won a second term in office by the narrowest of margins, beating Mircea Geoana, his challenger, by 50.3 per cent to 49.7 per cent. Now he must form a government capable of winning a parliamentary majority, to replace his last, which collapsed two months ago.
But the head-strong president is no consensus builder. He has in recent years tried almost every possible coalition combination. The former sea-captain must overcome his me-first instincts soon. Or the good ship Romania will founder on the economic rocks. The IMF may be ready to wait patiently for better times. The markets will not.
Related reading:
East Europe stays on road to change, despite bumps FT
Lex on central and eastern Europe FT
Video footage spices up race for Romania’s presidency FT
It passed largely unnoticed by the outside world, but perhaps the most intriguing event in European foreign policy last week was a visit paid to Belarus by Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi. The European Union has kept Belarus at arm’s length for years because of the repressive domestic policies of President Alexander Lukashenko. Berlusconi was the first western head of government to go to Minsk for well over a decade.
There was something surreal about the visit. Lukashenko, once dubbed Europe’s last dictator, praised Berlusconi as “a global, planetary man of politics, our friend”. Berlusconi responded: “Thank you, and thanks to your people who, I know, love you, as is demonstrated by the election results which everyone can see.” One can only assume this was an example of Berlusconi’s famous sense of humour.
So what was the prime minister’s purpose in supping with the devil? On a generous interpretation, one could say that the EU has been quietly working for the past year or two to improve relations with Belarus, suspending travel sanctions on Lukashenko and various high-level officials in return for modest progress on the human rights front. Berlusconi’s trip served as a signal that the EU is interested in maintaining this effort.
More to the point, Berlusconi enjoys making foreign policy initiatives that are a little out of the ordinary. He prides himself on having warm relations with Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin and with Libyan leader Muammer Gaddafi. He hosted Lukashenko in Rome last April. His foreign minister, Franco Frattini, tried to visit Iran in May, though the trip was cancelled at the last minute. All these are ways of making Italy appear distinctive on the international stage.
The final reason for Berlusconi’s trip concerns Italian business. Finmeccanica, Italy’s leading defence company, is probing opportunities to develop communications and transport projects in Belarus. In September Pier Francesco Guarguaglini, Finmeccanica’s chief executive, met Lukashenko in Minsk.
Berlusconi’s visit to Belarus doesn’t wreck the concept of a common EU foreign policy. But it will be interesting to see where he pops up next.
Next week’s summit of European Union leaders faces an important choice on Turkey. Should the EU toughen existing measures that are holding up Turkey’s EU accession talks, because of Ankara’s refusal to open its ports and airports to Greek Cypriot traffic? Or should the EU recognise that this would send completely the wrong message, just when Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders are trying to reach a comprehensive settlement of the long-standing Cyprus dispute?
Precisely because the EU is divided on the Turkish question – the Greek Cypriot-run government of Cyprus wants a strong line, and other countries are split between supporters and opponents of Turkey’s entry into the EU – it seems unlikely that a consensus can be reached in favour of placing additional obstacles in the path of Turkey’s negotiations.
But the fact that Turkey’s membership prospects are being framed in these terms is a bad sign in itself. It is draining public support in Turkey for joining the EU. It is encouraging the ruling Justice and Development party to pursue its policy of broadening Turkey’s foreign policy horizons beyond Europe and beyond the Nato alliance - to the Middle East, the Caucasus, Russia and central Asia.
That, of course, is by no means a bad thing. Turkey’s revived engagement with its non-European neighbours, and its mediation in disputes such as that between Israel and Syria, are positive developments.
But an analysis written by Amanda Akcakoca of the European Policy Centre think-tank sums up the other side of the picture nicely. “The old notion that Turkey is a country linked exclusively to the West has been set aside. The common vital interests that tied Ankara and Washington together during the Cold War have significantly weakened, and Turkey will no longer toe the US foreign policy line when this goes against its own strategic interests. Neither will it feel obliged to align itself to every EU foreign policy action or statement as long as Brussels persists in its ambiguous attitude towards Turkey’s eventual membership,” she writes.
One can agree with all of this – except perhaps the notion that it is “Brussels” that has an ambiguous attitude. Actually, it is the inability of the EU’s 27 governments to form a common position on Turkey that is the heart of the problem. The EU’s Lisbon treaty is meant to strengthen the EU’s common foreign policy and help the EU project its influence more convincingly around the world. No policy issue will be more important than the Turkey dossier in demonstrating whether these fine aspirations are just hot air.
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Peter Spiegel is the FT's Brussels bureau chief. He returned to the FT in August 2010 after spending five years covering foreign policy and national security issues from Washington for the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, focusing on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He first joined the FT in 1999 covering business regulation and corporate crime in its Washington bureau, before spending four years covering military affairs and the defence industry in London and Washington.
Joshua Chaffin is one of the FT's EU correspondents, covering areas including policies on trade, the environment and energy. He has worked in the FT's Brussels bureau since late 2008 and before that was an FT correspondent in New York and Washington DC. 
Alex Barker is EU correspondent, covering the single market, financial regulation and competition. He was formerly an FT political correspondent in the UK and joined the FT in 2005.
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