There are two ways of looking at the imminent appointment of Jerzy Buzek, a former Polish prime minister, as the next president of the European Parliament.  The first way is to applaud Europe’s politicians for doing the right thing and giving one of the European Union’s top jobs to a man from one of the 10 former communist countries in central and eastern Europe that joined the EU in 2004-2007.  This is the highest honour yet accorded to a public figure from one of the EU’s new member-states.  Poles are justifiably proud.

The second way, however, is to be honest and recognise that the job of parliament president is about the lowest-ranking position someone could be given without its looking like an insult.  Buzek, who belongs to the legislature’s main centre-right group, won’t even hold the job for the assembly’s full five-year term: under a deal with the socialists, he will step down after two and a half years and hand over the reins to a socialist.  The fact is that, by giving this post to Buzek, older and bigger member-states in western Europe are making sure that they will get all the really big jobs when they come up for grabs later this year.

These are the European Commission presidency (already earmarked for Portugal’s José Manuel Barroso, though his reappointment to a second term is running into a few embarrassing difficulties); other top Commission portfolios, such as those covering competition, the internal market and trade; the job of EU foreign policy high representative (shortly to be vacated by Spain’s Javier Solana); and the full-time presidency of the European Council, which represents national governments.  The latter job will be created only if the EU’s Lisbon treaty is ratified by all member-states.  But assuming that it comes into existence, I will eat mon chapeau if it doesn’t go to a western European.

There is an interesting side story to all this.  Buzek’s appointment became a certainty after Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s prime minister, withdrew his candidate, Mario Mauro.  Naturally, Italy wants compensation.  Berlusconi would probably be interested in one of the big Commission jobs for Italy, but Franco Frattini, his foreign minister, has other ideas.  He would like to replace Solana as EU foreign policy chief.

The reaction in certain other EU member-states to Frattini’s ambitions is, to put it mildly, one of incredulity.  No one has forgotten Frattini’s most recent diplomatic coup - a planned visit to Iran in May that went spectacularly wrong.  Frattini had to cancel his trip at the last minute when President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad insisted on meeting him in a city where the Iranians had just announced the successful launch of a medium-range missile capable of hitting Israel.  The visit would in any case have broken the EU’s policy of avoiding high-level contacts with Iran because of its nuclear programme.

So, it’s yes to Buzek - but no, grazie to Frattini.

Sweden’s European Union presidency hasn’t even started yet, but people in Brussels are already saying that the Swedish presidency website is the most impressive that any EU country has so far come up with.  Its homepage is clean, simple and intelligently presented, and the entire site is nice and easy to navigate.

I particularly like the section “The EU in our daily lives”, which is a slideshow of 15 photographs that attempt to explain how EU laws and activities shape so much of everyday European life.  It kicks off with a snapshot of a rather lugubrious-looking dog and the caption: “Dogs and cats travelling within the EU must have their own pet passports.”

Then we get an abrupt introduction to some of the grimmer realities of modern Europe.  “Custody disputes between parents from different EU countries must be settled in the child’s home country,” warns the caption to Snapshot Number 2.  “Abused women can receive help from women’s shelters, funded by the EU,” declares the caption to Snapshot Number 5.

A lighter note is struck with Snapshot Number 9 - “Chocolates must consist of one-quarter pure chocolate” - and consumer-friendly policies are highlighted in Snapshot Number 13 - “The EU has set a cap on mobile phone rates when travelling abroad”.

But without doubt my favourite picture is the initially mystifying Snapshot Number 7, which depicts a black-eared sheep with something yellow stuck on its right ear.  Underneath we read: “Gute sheep (gutefår) graze on Gotland thanks to EU funding for farmers.”

Gute sheep are a breed of horned sheep native to Gotland, the largest island in the Baltic sea, just off Sweden’s south-east coast.  They were once in danger of extinction but now, supported by groups such as the Gute Sheep Society of Sweden, and backed by EU funds, they are well protected.

But what’s the subtle message here?  That the Common Agricultural Policy isn’t such a waste of money, after all?

Mikolaj Dowgielewicz is truly a new Pole.  Not yet even 37 years old, he is a minister (for European Union affairs) in Poland’s centre-right government, speaks fluent English and French, was educated partly in the UK, and has spent more of his life in an independent democratic Poland than in a Soviet-controlled communist Poland.  When I was listening to him speak at a think-tank breakfast in Brussels this morning, it struck me with force that he would have been just a small boy when I first visited Warsaw, Krakow and Gdansk in the summer of 1980 and witnessed the emergence of the free trade union Solidarity.

Now, like other new Poles, Dowgielewicz talks breezily about Poland’s growing weight in the EU, which it joined five years ago, and its prospects for adopting the euro as early as 2012.  Poland doesn’t want or need the eurozone’s entry rules to be bent, he says.  “We’re not proposing any amendments to the entry criteria.  Not that we think they make absolute sense, but it’s not feasible.  You’d have to change the EU treaties.  We think the criteria strengthen the eurozone’s credibility.  It will have to be down to the merits of each individual country.”

Dowgielewicz also doesn’t mince his words when it comes to Poland’s exclusion from the G20, the world body charged with the task of reforming global financial institutions.  Better that the EU should have a single seat than that individual European countries should insist on separate representation, he says.  “It’s completely unacceptable that four, five, six countries go to the G20 thinking they can speak on behalf of the whole EU.”

All in all, one gets the sense that Dowgielewicz sees Poland as a country firmly, indeed irresistibly, on the way up.  “We’re gaining in confidence.  We’re going to be the seventh largest economy in the EU this year.  If the economic crisis continues for several more years, we may even overtake other economies.”

There is no hint here of pride preceding a fall.  Which EU countries, then, does Poland take as its models in achievement and conduct?  “We used to say Ireland was the role model for every new member-state, but now that’s a bit difficult,” he says, alluding to the Irish financial crisis and recession.

Dowgielewicz goes on: “When it comes to EU budget negotiations, we’ll draw lessons from Spain.  When it comes to promoting our own nationals in Brussels, we’ll draw from the British.  And when it comes to Euro-enthusiasm, we’ll draw from the Italians.”

Jan Fischer, the unassuming non-party technocrat who is holding the fort as Czech prime minister for the next few months, is getting his 15 minutes of fame on the world stage - but it’s certainly not going to his head.  He was sitting in his Prague office today telling me about his preparations for next week’s European Union summit in Brussels - an event he will chair - and somehow his background as a humble statistician kept colouring the conversation.

For example, when I asked him whether most EU heads of government supported a legally binding decision to nominate José Manuel Barroso at the summit for a second term as European Commission president, he replied that it was “50-50 … as regards the sample of people I’ve had a chance to speak to”.

Since there are 27 national leaders in the EU, I did some sums and cautiously suggested that this meant he must have spoken to an even number of leaders, rather than an odd number - unless (I silently mused) the UK’s Gordon Brown or Ireland’s Brian Cowen had broken in two as a result of their recent domestic electoral disasters.

Sure enough, Fischer confirmed that he had so far spoken to six leaders around Europe.  But what about that other burning question that surrounds contemporary Czech leaders?

Fischer, a former head of the Czech national statistics office, replaced Mirek Topolanek as premier - and it was only last week that Topolanek disclosed that he was one of the guests pictured in a state of extreme undress, though not distress, at the luxurious Sardinian villa of Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

So has Fischer ever been to Sardinia?   And if not, what, statistically speaking, are the chances that he may go in the near future?  Alas, the interview was over before I could pop the question.

Well, that’s a good start, isn’t it?  The Netherlands was the first of the European Union’s 27 countries to release exit polls on how its citizens voted in the European Parliament elections.  And guess what?  The Party For Freedom (PVV), a right-wing anti-immigration party led by the anti-Islamic populist Geert Wilders, is expected to finish second with more than 15 per cent of the vote and at least four of the 25 Dutch seats in the EU legislature.

In truth, people outside the Netherlands shouldn’t be surprised by the PVV’s success.  Wilders has been riding high in Dutch opinion polls for quite some time.  Back in March, one survey even suggested that his party would become the biggest party in the Dutch parliament if an immediate election were held.

Over the past 10 years, the Dutch people have become increasingly doubtful about the direction in which the EU appears to be going.  Four years ago the Dutch overwhelmingly voted No in a referendum on the EU’s planned constitutional treaty.  Last April, a poll carried out by the market research group TNS NIPO showed that 60 per cent of the Dutch thought the EU institutions were a waste of public money.  

But the distinctively Dutch version of “euroscepticism” also reflects the way that Islam and immigration have surged to the front of political debate in a country that celebrates tolerance and cultural diversity, but sees them as under threat from immigrants who despise such ideals.  The spectacular political career of Pim Fortuyn, cut short when he was assassinated in the Dutch 2002 general election campaign, formed part of this picture.  So did the murder of Theo van Gogh, the film-maker killed by a radical Islamist of Dutch-Moroccan nationality in 2004.

There was a lot of popular dissatisfaction for Wilders to exploit in this European Parliament election campaign, and he did so fairly successfully.  But one should remember that the Dutch turnout was low - about 40 per cent - and the great majority of Dutch voters did not cast ballots for Wilders or other extremists.  So this is not a catastrophe for democracy.  It is, however, an embarrassment and a warning signal.

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Vaclav Klaus, the Czech president, sounds like a man who intends to enjoy the next two months. In an interview last week with the Czech newspaper Mlada fronta Dnes, he merrily poured scorn on US and European Union measures to fight the world financial crisis and recession by suggesting that they drew on the spirit of 20th-century eastern European and Soviet communism.

Last month, he grabbed the headlines by engineering the downfall of Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek’s government right in the middle of the Czech Republic’s six-month EU presidency. In February, he prompted a walk-out by angry members of the European Parliament when he told them in a speech that their assembly did not encourage freedom of thought. As for his opinions on  climate change (misplaced alarmism), they are quite simply unrepeatable in polite European society.

Like a naughty child who leaves the fridge door open, kicks a football around the house, feeds the cat orange peel and questions every instruction he receives, Klaus just never gives up. Now his sights are set on the EU’s showpiece summit of heads of state and government on June 19-20 in Brussels. With Topolanek out of the way and the new interim government to be led by Jan Fischer, the worthy but politically faceless head of the Czech national statistical office, Klaus fancies the idea of chairing the EU summit.

The prospect of the super-eurosceptic Klaus taking charge of such an important event is causing sweat to break out on the brow of many a Eurocrat. For the summit must address two crucial issues: the guarantees to be promised to Ireland in return for another Irish referendum on the EU’s Lisbon reform treaty, and the question of whether to reappoint José Manuel Barroso as the European Commission president for a second five-year term.

Klaus is such a vociferous opponent of the Lisbon treaty that some in Brussels are wondering whether he is cooking up a plan to derail the summit by obstructing approval of the guarantees Ireland is seeking (the right to an Irish EU commissioner, pledges of non-interference in matters concerning taxation, neutrality and family law). Perhaps he also plans to disrupt the process by which EU leaders pick the next Commission president?

In reality, Klaus is nothing like as strong as the turbulent state of Czech politics and the EU’s frequent institutional paralysis make him appear. For one thing, the upper house of the Czech parliament is due to hold a vote in early May on ratifying the Lisbon treaty. It looks close, but the odds are that it will go through. If it does, Klaus will be powerless to stop the Irish getting their guarantees. Indeed, he will sooner or later have to add his presidential signature to the treaty, completing the process of Czech ratification.

In the second place, if there were even a hint that Klaus was planning to disrupt the June summit, other EU leaders could simply postpone the meeting until Sweden replaces the Czech Republic in the EU presidency on July 1. The same applies to the issue of Barroso’s renomination (though the real problem here may come from other leaders, not Klaus).

Klaus has had plenty of fun at the EU’s expense over the past four months, and he may yet have some more. Some of his ideas about puncturing the pomposity and self-delusion of the EU are on target. But in EU terms he is the naughty boy who will never grow up. The EU itself will move on and pretty quickly forget all about him.

There can be few more terrifying sentences in contemporary English than: “The Treaty of Lisbon is not the last word.”

The sentence appears in “Saving the European Union”, a new book by Andrew Duff, a British Liberal Democrat who sits in the European Parliament. It’s certain to raise the hackles of anti-Lisbon campaigners, who have said all along that the EU can never resist the temptation to keep tinkering with its institutional arrangements, no matter how strong the evidence that European voters are thoroughly turned off by the whole process.

Before I develop this point, let me note that Duff’s short book is an excellent introduction to the Lisbon treaty and to the challenges facing today’s EU. Friends and foes alike of the EU will benefit from reading it. Duff is one of the European Parliament’s top constitutional affairs experts, and he writes clean, crisp prose.

The Lisbon treaty’s fate hangs mainly on the outcome of a referendum, expected to take place in October, in Ireland, whose electorate rejected the document in June 2008 by a 53.4 to 46.6 per cent margin. If the Irish reverse their verdict and Lisbon comes into effect, EU leaders have solemnly promised us that there will be no more institutional tinkering, no more inter-governmental conferences, no more constitutional conventions - in short, no more attempts to ape Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and the other US founding fathers - for a long time to come. “We’re in tune with the voters,” is the message. “We know they wouldn’t forgive us.”

The institutional reform efforts that are encapsulated in Lisbon began as long ago as 2001 and have been plagued with embarrassing setbacks, so it is understandable that most EU leaders have little appetite at the moment for yet more self-punishment. Still, I have always had a sneaking suspicion that the adoption of Lisbon would in fact serve as a prelude to another bite at the institutional cherry.

Duff’s book strengthens this suspicion. “The founding fathers of the United States admitted from the outset that the Constitution as drafted was not the final word. Far from over-selling the text as the ultimate settlement, as some Europeans have done with Lisbon, the Americans were bold enough to admit that further amendment would be both desirable and necessary…”

Duff continues: “So the Treaty of Lisbon is not the last word… Europe can decide whether it wants to be more united or more divided: it neither can nor will stay as it is. The challenge is to manage this federalisation process with similar skill and boldness to that evinced in their time by Messrs Madison, Hamilton and Jefferson.”

Well, there you have it. Lisbon isn’t the last word. Europe must move on with its “federalisation process”. You can’t say you haven’t been warned.