What more is there to say about the Court of First Instance’s landmark, historic, unprecedented etc etc ruling in the Microsoft case? Quite a lot, I fear. But given the avalanche of commentary and analysis that Monday’s judgement has already attracted, I will restrict myself to just one issue.

How will - or how should - Microsoft react to its thumping defeat at the hands of the EU’s second-highest court?

The group itself will certainly take some days or weeks to study the ruling before drawing any firm conclusions, but I would not be surprised if Microsoft comes up with a rather more radical response than we are used from the slow-moving software behemoth. After Monday’s devastating defeat, "business as usual" is simply not an option.

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Once again, Europeans are fuming over a US measure designed to combat the threat of global terrorism. This time round, it is the tightening of US immigration and customs rules that have sparked anger in Brussels and other European capitals. According to a recent bill that implements the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, European citizens that currently don’t require a visa to enter the US will have to notify US authorities a certain period of time before departure.

While tourists and business travellers will find this requirement annoying, to say the least, the much greater threat to the transatlantic economy is posed by a second new measure - namely the requirement that every single cargo container shipped or flown into the US must be screened before sent across the Atlantic.

Since the bill was signed into law by George W. Bush, the US Department of Homeland Security has been keen to play down the effects of the new measures. In particular, it stressed that - contrary to earlier reports - travellers would not have to register with the US authorities 48 hours before every departure, but only once every one or two years. On container screening, the department said it will work closely with the country’s trading partners to ensure the measure don’t damage global trade flows.

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Brussels famously shuts down completely in August. There are no Commission meetings, no Parliament sessions and no backroom dealings between national diplomats in the Council. There are no press conferences, no announcements and even the ranks of Brussels’ 15,000 lobbyists appear to have thinned out. In other words, it is the perfect time to either take a holiday or spend an hour or two leafing through the latest International Monetary Fund report on the Eurozone. I chose the latter option, and having waded through almost 70 pages of colourful little graphs and bone-dry economical analysis I thought I might as well share some of the highlights.

Perhaps the most interesting issue raised by the Washington-based institution concerns the threat to financial stability in the Eurozone. The IMF’s experts point out that the Eurozone (the same might just as well be said about the EU as a whole) is prone to a very peculiar risk deriving from the gap between market integration on the one hand and the lack of supervisory integration on the other hand.

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The European Commission has been keen to play down the significance of Wednesday’s court ruling in the Schneider/Legrand case. In a precedent-setting decision, the European Court of First Instance ordered Brussels to pay damages to Schneider for wrongly blocking a merger with its French rival six years ago.

The antitrust watchdog stressed that it was held liable only for a fraction of the €1.66bn in damages claimed by Schneider. It also pointed out that the number of potential claimants was small - a view shared by most competition lawyers and antitrust experts. Indeed, at first glance it would appear the ruling only applies to the four companies that saw their mergers blocked by Brussels, but later managed to get the ruling overturned in court.

For the sake of European taxpayers, one can only hope that is true. But there are two other potential claimants that could inflict real financial pain on the EU regulator.

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It is hardly a secret that the European Parliament’s formal powers fall short of those accorded to a "proper" national legislature. One of the more tiring consequences of this situation is the Parliament’s lingering inferiority complex, which expresses itself all too often in grandstanding, overblown rhetoric and a deep desire to be constantly consulted, informed and patted on the back by the Brussels big boys - the Commission and Council.

Given the unique nature of the Union’s constitutional set-up, the Parliament will almost certainly remain a somewhat stunted creature for a long time to come. Member states will never give up their de-facto veto over lawmaking and their exclusive rights in many other areas, not least foreign policy.

Yet all this has not stopped the Parliament from emerging as an increasingly powerful player in the past few years. The latest example of the chamber’s growing clout may well have surfaced this week, when the Parliament’s transport committee voted on an ambitious plan to fully liberalise the Union’s €90bn postal services market.

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Spare a thought for poor Guenter Verheugen. The European Union’s industry commissioner has been out of the spotlight for months now, giving few press conferences and generally doing very little to create headlines, applause or criticism. Even his favourite policy issue - the unglamourous better regulation agenda - has been kept at a mercifully low profile recently.

The next thing you know, he’s being compared to Paul Wolfowitz.

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It has been quite a while since the EU split over a piece of legislation, but there are signs that this blissful state is about to end. The past few months of peace were, after all, caused by the uncertainty surrounding the next French president. Who would succeed tired Jacques Chirac? Just how obstructive and protectionist would his successor be?

Since Nicholas Sarkozy triumphed in from last week’s election, much of that uncertainty has now been removed. And while it is too early for France’s partners to reopen negotiations on sensitive dossiers quite yet, you can hear the legislative machine creaking back into action all over Brussels.

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Germany has urged the European Commission to relax its strict rules on state aid in cases where EU governments compete with non-EU countries for investment. Berlin wants to introduce a "matching" clause that would essentially nullify the Union’s ban on subsidies and allow governments to offer the same aid package as countries outside the union.

Germany’s proposal would mean that if, for example, a US federal state tried to attract investment from a South Korean chipmaker with the help of massive financial incentives, Germany or France could offer the same level of subsidies.

The plan will be discussed at an informal meeting of EU industry ministers starting today, and no doubt it will be wildly popular in other European capitals.

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It has been more than two weeks since the European Commission issued formal antitrust charges against Apple and the four music majors over iTunes, but I’m still puzzled by some aspects of this affair.

As always, the Commission refused to provide details of the charges, which were communicated to the five groups in a confidential statement of objections.

Brussels merely said that the deals underpinning the sale of music through the iTunes platform appeared to amount to an "agreement to restrict competition". It added that its concerns related to the fact that users from one EU country are prevented from accessing the iTunes website in another EU country, and so can’t benefit from lower prices there.

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There is an interesting exhibition currently on show at the Brussels Bozar cultural centre that got me thinking about a rarely-explored aspect of the European Union. Entitled "A vision for Brussels" the show tries to analyse why the EU has generally produced such dismal buildings for its institutions - and examines ways of improving the Union’s poor architectural record.

As any visitor to Brussels’ European quarter can testify, there is little that is beautiful or inspiring about the headquarters of the European Commission, the European Council or the European Parliament. The first two are housed in vast, anonymous blocks of stone and glass, while the Parliament is housed in a megalomaniac, post-modernist nightmare that arrogantly dwarfs the tranquil surroundings of the Place Luxembourg.

Perhaps even worse than the individual buildings, the EU has so far paid little or no respect to the urban environment in which it has dropped its shoe boxes.

The architects behind the Brussels exhibition - who hail from the respected Rotterdam-based Berlage Institut - have one radical suggestion to improve this sorry state: for starters, they call for the demolition of the European Parliament.

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