Oh, the magic of democracy! Three European election results have lifted spirits in Brussels: Poland’s parliamentary vote of October 2007, the Serbian presidential ballot of February 3, and the first round of Cyprus’s presidential election last Sunday.

In each case, the winners stood for better relations with the European Union and a co-operative approach to solving European diplomatic problems. The losers were prickly, obstructive nationalists and the opposite of everything the EU likes to think it stands for.Whether these three results will be enough to wipe out the painful memory of the Dutch and French referendums of 2005 that killed off the EU’s experiment in constitution-building remains to be seen. But for many in Brussels, the message from Poland, Serbia and Cyprus is that democracy not only works, but strengthens the EU and the cause of European integration.

In other words, don’t be afraid of the voters - they can be trusted, in the end, to get it right. In Poland, the October election produced a whopping defeat for Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the prime minister who had achieved the reckless feat of simultaneously irritating Germany and Russia, Poland’s far more powerful neighbours. The winner was Donald Tusk and his pro-European, pro-business Civic Platform party.

In Serbia, the pro-European Boris Tadic scored a victory over the ultra-nationalist Tomislav Nikolic that was narrow but just enough to let the EU claim that Serb voters had chosen a European path over the road of darkness.

Most intriguing of all was Sunday’s result in Cyprus. (more…)

When it comes to EU security missions abroad, most eyes turn to Kosovo, where 2,000 law and order officials are about to be deployed over the next four months to stabilise the province after its secession from Serbia. But surely we ought to be paying just as much attention to events in the former French colony of Chad, where a 3,700-strong EU "peacekeeping" force is finally beginning to arrive after months of delay.

The ostensible purpose of the EU force is to help humanitarian aid workers and protect hundreds of thousands of refugees who have fled violence spreading from Sudan’s Darfur region, east of Chad. But the question asked in some EU capitals is whether the EU’s mission is turning into something quite different - namely, a prop for French foreign policy in a former African colony.

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It is difficult to find anyone in Brussels who is enthusiastic about the likely return to power of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy. When you mention his 2001-2006 premiership, and especially the way he ran Italy’s European Union presidency in July-December 2003, you sometimes see that rarest of sights - a Eurocrat shuddering in revulsion.

But if Berlusconi wins the elections forced by the collapse of Romano Prodi’s government, I predict interesting times ahead. Not because Berlusconi will once more make himself an outcast by comparing German members of the European parliament to Nazi concentration camp guards. Rather, because it is in Brussels that his massive conflict of interest, between his political role and his position as Italy’s pre-eminent media tycoon, may at long last be challenged.

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At a conference on Europe’s future held last October in Brussels, Robert Cooper, a high-level European Union foreign policy strategist, made an interesting observation. "I like the idea of 27 countries struggling to agree with each other. It is rather undignified, but it is a powerful message," he said.

Well, when it comes to the EU’s policy on Serbia and Kosovo, one can certainly agree with the "undignified" bit. Something of a low point was reached this week at the regular monthly meeting of EU foreign ministers. It produced an offer to Serbia of an "interim political agreement", dangling the carrots of freer trade, visa liberalisation and educational exchanges in the vague hope that this would cause Serb voters to back Boris Tadic, the moderate incumbent, in this weekend’s presidential election run-off.

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It is time to sort out the mess in Afghanistan - and where better to start than by talking with the enemy?

For six years, Nato has been fighting Taliban insurgents in what has turned into the biggest military operation in the alliance’s almost 60-year history. But in terms of results there is not a great deal to show for it - and the European public senses it. Support for Nato’s operations in Afghanistan was fairly broad-based to begin with. But now it is fracturing - and not just in Germany and Italy, where the enthusiasm for sending troops to a war in Asia was not exactly robust in the first place.

Yet if the EU and the Americans, Canadians and others were to pull out, it would deal a damaging blow to Nato, to western security more generally, and to the EU’s hopes of running a successful common foreign and security policy. What is needed isn’t a disorderly withdrawal, but an imaginative rethinking of the whole operation.

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When I lived in Vienna in 1983, my apartment was next to a gay bar with scrubbed-out windows and an English-language name: Why Not.

I find myself asking the same question as the 10th anniversary of the euro approaches and a cosy atmosphere of self-congratulation in Brussels warms up. Why not? Why shouldn’t the European Union pat itself on the back?

After all, the euro is at present the strongest of the world’s major currencies. It underpins steady economic growth and a very high average standard of living for 318m people in 15 countries.

And if you live in Spain, I hear those purple 500-euro banknotes come in very handy.

But a new report by the Bruegel think-tank, a Brussels-based institute that specialises in economic issues, dispels any complacency about the longer-term future of Europe’s monetary union.

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If oompah music and fire-eaters in folk costume are the way to win the European media’s heart, then Slovenia, the new holder of the rotating EU presidency, is off to a flying start.

The melodies struck up by the accordionist, horn player and guitarist who entertained a pack of Brussels-based reporters at a farm restaurant outside Ljubljana on Monday night were so rumbustious that one normally vivacious French journalist slumped ever more glumly in his seat. “Is this what EU enlargement really means?” he was no doubt asking himself.

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One of the worst kept secrets in Brussels is that Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel don’t exactly hit it off. The German chancellor is even-tempered, precise, methodical. The French president is passionate, impulsive and "an unguided human missile", to quote one diplomat who has seen him in action amd whose jaw has only just started to return to its normal position.

The areas of disagreement between Merkel and Sarkozy, the EU’s most important pair, start with monetary and exchange rate policy. He is scornful of the European Central Bank’s anti-inflation emphasis, but she dislikes his jabs at the ECB’s independence. They end with Turkey, where Sarkozy flatly opposes Turkish entry into the EU and Merkel, though not personally in favour, believes the EU should honour its pledge to Turkey to continue membership talks.

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As I watched the European Union’s leaders sign the Lisbon reform treaty on Thursday, my mind wandered back to that pleasant autumn day in Rome in October 2004 when many of these same leaders signed the constitutional treaty that was the present document’s ill-fated predecessor.

Italy’s prime minister at that time was Silvio Berlusconi, the billionaire media magnate. He had fought tooth and nail to make sure Rome was the city in which the constitutional treaty was signed. In fact, some said  this had been the only goal that he really felt passionate about when Italy held the EU presidency from July to December 2003.

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The Avenue Louise is the most elegant shopping district in Brussels, but these days you are just as likely there to run into the leader of some embattled former Soviet republic as the bejewelled wife of a Belgian millionaire.

At the Conrad Hotel (Ave. Louise 71), where a duplex suite with a kingsize bed for a couple on a romantic getaway costs €1,865 a night, I had an enlightening conversation on Thursday morning with Lado Gurgenidze, the new US-educated prime minister of Georgia.

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