So exciting are European Union summits that they sometimes distract attention from developments that, though perhaps less eye-catching, tell you a lot more about what’s going on in the EU.  For example, the latest two-day summit is concentrating on financial regulation, guarantees for Ireland’s sovereignty so that it can hold another referendum on the EU’s Lisbon treaty, and the nomination of José Manuel Barroso for a second term as European Commission president.

But a more interesting story was the breakdown on Thursday of EU-mediated talks between Slovenia and Croatia over their bilateral maritime border dispute.  This makes it virtually certain that Croatia will not complete its EU accession negotiations by the end of this year - the goal that Barroso and Croatia’s government had originally set themselves.

Croatia has been an official candidate for EU membership since 2005.  The slow pace of its accession talks is sending a very poor signal to the populations of other Balkan countries, such as Albania, the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia and Serbia.  They instinctively see their future in the EU, with its implicit promises of prosperity and security.

But with Croatia’s negotiations gummed up, they are starting to wonder when they will ever get their opportunity to join.  This has serious implications for the stability of the region, which was devastated by war and economic dislocation in the 1990s and is now suffering the impact of the world financial crisis and recession.

Slovenia started blocking Croatia’s accession talks last December in what looked like a blatant attempt to exploit the fact that it was already an EU member to triumph in the border dispute.  Most other EU countries were unhappy with Slovenia’s tactics.  Six months later, however, nothing much has changed.

Why have Slovenia’s EU partners not put Ljubljana under more pressure to find a solution?  One answer is that certain countries - one thinks of France, Germany and the Netherlands - are not especially enthusiastic about enlarging the EU at the moment.  At the very least, they want the Lisbon treaty to come into force before the EU admits any new members.

Given the uncertainty over the Lisbon treaty, it would seem that Slovenia has every incentive not to speed up the resolution of its border dispute with Croatia.  And so it is that EU enlargement - one of the bloc’s policies that has been shown to work very effectively over the past 30 years - falls by the wayside.  Not very clever.

Opinion polls show that the general European public has got only the vaguest idea of what the European Parliament does. So here is a personal six-point guide:

1. The parliament has equal power with the Council of Ministers (national governments) in deciding most European Union-wide laws. This will increase to cover virtually all EU legislation if the Lisbon treaty comes into force next January.

2. The parliament cannot propose legislation, which is the European Commission’s exclusive right.

3. The parliament can amend the annual EU budget proposed by the Commission and Council. It must approve the final version. But its budgetary powers are otherwise more limited than those of a typical national parliament.

4. The parliament must approve or reject the Council’s nominee for Commission president.

5. The parliament can force the entire Commission, but not individual commissioners, to resign.

6. All members of the European Parliament have the right to make complete fools of themselves, as did Mogens Camre of Denmark today in some choice remarks about how Nordic people are more clever than people from the Balkans.

The 73-year-old Camre is deputy leader of a nationalist-conservative faction in the parliament known as the Union for Europe of the Nations. He told a French interviewer: “When I look at the voting rules, I see that countries like Bulgaria and Romania have many more votes than Denmark and Sweden and Finland, and I think - honestly speaking - that we are more clever than they are. We have much more transparency, democracy and social welfare. And we don’t think that people who did not create healthy societies should decide for us.”

Excellent! And I see that some polls are predicting that the next European Parliament will contain even more Camre types than it does now…

When Olli Rehn, the European Union’s enlargement commissioner, underwent his confirmation hearings in 2004, he was asked what goals he hoped to achieve by the end of his five-year spell in office. He named six: a) a EU of 27 member-states, b) Croatia’s entry negotiations in their final stage, c) other western Balkan states put on a EU path through association agreements, d) Turkey firmly on the European track, e) Kosovo’s status settled, and f) Cyprus reunified.

Speaking last Friday at a conference in Prague to mark the fifth anniversary of the EU’s “big bang” expansion from 15 to 25 (and later 27) members, Rehn claimed that he had met five of his six targets. Only Cyprus’s reunification was missing. But even on Cyprus it wasn’t all doom and gloom - talks on a comprehensive settlement had been going on since last September.

The mild-mannered and astute Rehn has been an impressive enlargement commissioner, in my view, but I beg to differ with him on how far his six goals have been met. Clearly, one target has been 100 per cent achieved: a 27-member EU. And, on a generous interpretation, you could say the association agreements reached with the western Balkan countries have indeed put them on a path to EU membership.

Some would caution, though, that one of these countries - Bosnia-Herzegovina - is, despite having secured its association accord, not really on a EU path at all. In fact, it sometimes seems on a quite different path - the path to self-destruction. So let’s say the western Balkan goal has been 90 per cent achieved.

As for Croatia, its entry talks should be in their final stages, but they are not, because Slovenia is blocking the process over a maritime border dispute. It now looks all but impossible for Croatia to wrap up its accession talks by the end of this year. Still, Croatia will probably join the EU in a few years’ time. Rehn’s goal is 75 per cent achieved.

Now the going gets tough. Is Turkey firmly on the European track? Alas, no. Opposition in parts of the EU to Turkey’s possible membership, and waning enthusiam for the EU in Turkey, place a huge question mark over whether Turkey will ever join the bloc. The membership talks are continuing, but in this case Rehn’s goal is only 20 per cent met.

Regarding Kosovo, I’d say it’s rash to call its status settled when two-thirds of the world’s countries, including five EU member-states, have refused to recognise the ex-Serbian province’s declaration of independence last year. Ask high-ranking European policymakers to bet money on whether Kosovo will be a sovereign state 50 years from now, and you do not get many takers. This goal is also only 20 per cent met.

Finally, there is Cyprus. Reunification seems a distant prospect, but Rehn is right to say that the current talks hold out some hope of progress. Ten per cent for effort.

Taken as a whole, that would give Rehn a score of 315 per cent on moving forward EU enlargement out of a theoretical maximum of 600 per cent. Given all the challenges he’s faced since 2004, I’d say that’s a strong performance - but 500 per cent it’s not.

The European Union is truly a weird and wonderful thing. Take the question of enlargement into the western Balkans (an area once known as Yugoslavia and Albania).

As is well-known, France, Germany and other western European countries have been reluctant to move the enlargement process forward as long as the EU’s Lisbon reform treaty remains blocked. Among their concerns is the fear that their electorates will not take kindly to the prospect of yet more eastern Europeans piling into the EU at a time of extraordinary economic crisis.

And yet Montenegro, which submitted an official application in December to join the EU, got an important boost this week. EU governments agreed to ask the European Commission to provide an opinion on Montenegro’s application. This is a crucial technical step forward in the process that leads to full EU membership.

But the western European governments that are nervous about enlargement were so anxious that this step should receive no publicity that the ministerial council which approved it was none other than … a meeting of EU fisheries ministers!

This is perfectly permissible under EU rules, by the way. But usually the Brussels-based media that cover the EU are not keeping their eyes peeled for this kind of artful manoeuvre.

So, on the one hand, one can say: “Well done, the EU, for helping to keep the enlargement process in motion.”

And on the other hand, one can say: “What pure political cowardice - no wonder the EU is in such trouble with its national electorates.”

Once upon a time a certain corner of Europe was known as Yugoslavia. Then it became former Yugoslavia or, for pointy-heads, the Yugoslav successor states. Now, with Slovenia in the European Union, Brussels has packaged what’s left of the old Yugoslavia with Albania and relabelled it “the western Balkans” - but the problems remain as intractably Yugoslav as ever.

Take Bosnia-Herzegovina, where EU foreign ministers today named Valentin Inzko, a high-ranking Austrian diplomat, as the bloc’s new Special Representative. Inzko will wear two hats - he was named the world’s High Representative for Bosnia last week. But it will be something of a miracle if he makes any progress towards bringing the Bosnian state off the international life support machine on which it has depended since the end of the 1992-95 civil war.

Insofar as the EU has any idea what to do, it seems to believe that the mutual suspicions that poison relations between Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Serbs (and, to some extent, both communities’ relations with Bosnian Croats) will gradually disappear under the lure of eventual EU membership for the country. But as an excellent new report by the International Crisis Group points out, Bosnia is quite unlike the other former communist states to which the EU has - often successfully - applied this soothing strategy.

The essential problem is that the 1995 Dayton peace agreement did enough to end the war and suppress the temptation to start another one, but not enough to convince the Bosnian Muslims, Serbs and Croats that their only possible future lay in co-operating inside a single state. The Muslims were permitted to believe that one day they could assert themselves as Bosnia’s largest and strongest nationality, running a more centralised state. The Serbs were allowed to think that their sub-entity, Republika Srpska, might somehow be able to wriggle free of the rest of Bosnia and win independence.

Consequently, as Miroslav Lajcak of Slovakia, Inzko’s predecessor as High Representative, once told me, politicians representing Bosnia’s three nationalities do not regard putting Bosnia on a firm path to EU membership as a priority. Rather, all the squabbles that preoccupied them in the 1980s and early 1990s are being played out yet again.

“Hardliners on all sides recognise that advancing toward Europe means giving up their ideal solutions: the Serbs know that as Bosnia draws closer to Brussels, it will be harder for them to break away; the Bosniaks fear that reducing RS [Republika Srpska] autonomy will be impossible,” the ICG report says.

The tone of the nationalist rhetoric in Bosnia these days reveals a lot about the kind of dysfunctional place it has become. Although shrill, it stops short of direct incitement to mass violence - in contrast to, say, the language used in 1991 and early 1992. At the same time, it is loud enough to show that Bosnia’s politicians, living under international protection for almost 14 years, have got used to the idea that they can shout all they like and it won’t have any practical consequences for them.

They are, in that sense, like irresponsible adolescents - with the EU like a bumbling aunt, unsure whether to punish, reward, lecture, or just run upstairs with her hands over her ears.

In his recent inaugural address in Washington, President Barack Obama said “the time has come to set aside childish things”. Evidently the leaders of the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia weren’t listening.

They have just done an unbelievably childish thing and named their section of a major north-south trans-European highway - known in Eurospeak as “Corridor 10″ - after Alexander the Great. In 2007, they renamed Skopje airport after him.

Now, as we know, Alexander certainly had a taste for travel. He extended his empire as far as India. But these persistent efforts to attach his name to modern European transport systems are, I’d say, beginning to stretch the point.

The Macedonians in Skopje think their state has a rightful claim on Alexander’s memory because of his connections to their territory in ancient times. But the authorities in Athens regard Alexander as an exclusively Greek warrior-hero.

The result: Greece has made clear it won’t pay one euro towards the cost of the Macedonian part of Corridor 10. And relations between Athens and Skopje are in yet another mess.

In Brussels, European Union officials are beside themselves with frustration as they watch this dispute jeopardise their carefully laid plans for the EU’s slow but steady enlargement into the Balkans. The argument over what former Yugoslav Macedonia should call itself has dragged on for almost 20 years, and a solution seems no closer now than when it first broke out.

Of course, the dispute arouses great passions on both sides - as shown in the posts to this story on BalkanInsight.com. But the way it’s being handled would be enough to make the great Alexander turn in his grave.

Greece argues that Skopje’s claim to the name Macedonia is an assault on Greece’s ancient Hellenic heritage, its identity and even its territory, since there is a northern Greek province also called Macedonia. For the former Yugoslav republic, however, it is vital to have a name that strengthens the identity of its people. Skopje perceives subtle threats not only from Greece but from Bulgaria, which questions whether there really is such a thing as a Macedonian nation and language, and Serbia, which denies the autonomy of the Macedonian church.

Last year, a widespread view in Brussels was that Greece had overplayed its hand when it blocked ex-Yugoslav Macedonia’s progress towards EU and Nato membership because of the name dispute. Now, however, it’s Skopje that’s in the EU’s black book, because of its dumb decision on renaming its bit of Corridor 10.

In an excellent new report, the International Crisis Group think-tank recommends that Skopje should state its readiness to accept a UN mediator’s proposal and use the name “Republic of Northern Macedonia” for international purposes. In return, Greece should drop its veto threats at Nato and the EU.

Common sense, really. But this is a commodity in short supply in some parts of the Balkans.

Turkey should almost be pleased. On Friday the European Union agreed to open two new “chapters”, or policy areas, in Turkey’s EU accession negotiations - on the free movement of capital and on information society and the media. The Czech Republic, which takes over the EU’s rotating presidency from France on January 1, hopes to open two more chapters during its six-month spell in charge.

So out of the 35 chapters that need to be completed before a country can join the EU, Turkey now has 10 open and could have 12 open by June 30. Whoopee! At this rate, all 35 will be open by some time in 2015. Except, of course, that certain western European governments have no intention of letting Turkey into the EU at all. Moreover, eight of Turkey’s negotiating chapters were frozen two years ago because the EU disapproves of Turkey’s refusal to open its ports and airports to trade with Cyprus. All in all, far from moving steadily forwards, Turkey’s accession talks are going nowhere fast.

Still, at least Turkey is under fewer and fewer illusions about where things really stand. With Croatia, there is less certainty. Quarrels with Slovenia, its former fellow-Yugoslav republic, meant that the EU on Friday concluded only three chapters with Croatia and opened one more. Slovenia blocked further progress.

This was a bitter blow for Croatia, which had wanted to conclude five chapters, open 10, and race ahead to completing its EU entry talks by next December, with a view to becoming a full member-state in 2011. Instead, Croatia now has concluded only 7 of the 35 chapters, with another 15 open and 13 more still to be launched. Finishing these talks inside the next 12 months is starting to look like a very tall task.

Then there is Serbia. A report by the United Nations war crimes prosecutor this month made it clear that, even if Serbian co-operation with the war crimes tribunal in The Hague had improved, it ought to be even better. The arrest of Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general accused of genocide, would do the trick. But as long as he remains at large, the Dutch government won’t lift its block on closer Serbian association with the EU.

Macedonia is stuck, too - over that wearisome dispute with Greece about what its name should be. As for Bosnia-Herzegovina, it will be something of an achievement if it hangs together as a state, never mind about joining the EU. And when Montenegro officially presented its membership application on Monday, there were mutterings on the EU side that this was much too premature.

Some people put these problems down to “enlargement fatigue” in the EU’s older member-states. I don’t know if they’re right. But it certainly looks as if, as far as concerns enlargement, everyone can settle down to a good long sleep in 2009.

One of the pleasures of the Czech Republic’s forthcoming presidency of the European Union will be to watch in action a thoughtful, humorous, bow-tied 71-year-old who rejoices in the name of Karl Johannes Nepomuk Josef Norbert Friedrich Antonius Wratislaw Mena, prince of Schwarzenberg. Karel Schwarzenberg, as he is better known, has served as the Czech foreign minister for the past two years, and I caught up with him over breakfast.

An old friend of Vaclav Havel, the philosopher-playwright who became the Czech head of state after the anti-communist Velvet Revolution of 1989, Schwarzenberg will have the task of keeping the Czech ship on a steady course at a time when quite a few other EU countries are worried about how Prague will handle its six months in the hot seat. Schwarzenberg is diplomatic elegance personified but, as with Havel, that doesn’t mean he’s afraid to speak his mind.

I’ll give just one example. The question came up of whether the EU should continue to delay implementing its so-called stabilisation and association agreement with Serbia, an accord that would put Belgrade clearly on the road to EU membership. The EU is taking this line mainly because the Dutch government is unhappy that the Serbian authorities have not yet arrested Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb military leader accused of war crimes in the 1990s.

Like many other EU foreign ministers, Schwarzenberg says he understands the Dutch point of view, but thinks they are wrong: Serbia should be brought in from the cold. His reasoning, though, is quite distinctive. ”I look back at Europe after the second world war from the perspective of each future EU country. If each war criminal had had to be dealt with first [before launching the EU], I’m not sure the process would have started before the 1980s,” he said.

He was too polite to mention which countries had failed to prosecute war criminals until four decades after the war’s end - the 1980s were famous in France for the cases of Klaus Barbie and Maurice Papon - but in fact I didn’t get the impression that Schwarzenberg was trying to accuse other EU states of hypocrisy. Rather, he was just suggesting that the world is an imperfect place and we must accept that reality and move on. 

“Each country has its own bloody history,” he said. “I think Iceland is the only country that’s had no connection with war criminals over the past 100 years - and perhaps Denmark. Everyone else did something. We shouldn’t behave as if we’re all saints.”