The results of a Commission consultation about the needs of small and medium-sized businesses - paving the way for a possible Small Business Act - have just been made public. Most of the small businesses responding wanted regulatory burdens reduced, easier access to public sector contracts, more effective protection of their intellectual property rights, and greater support should they wish to expand and go global. No surprises there.

The most unified response, though, came over education - with 88 per cent saying there was a need for additional measures to stimulate entrepreneurship through education, and 86.6 per cent believing that entrepreneurship was insufficiently reflected in school curricula.

At face-value, this is obviously true: fourth-formers aren’t taught sales techniques for closing a deal or how to manage a balance sheet. But, then again, is it really desirable that they should be ? After all, public service isn’t formally on most curricula either, nor the rudiments of professional life. And wouldn’t more informal involvement by local small businesses in school activities - such as fund-raising or marketing - be a more practical way to go than adding “basic economic principles with a special focus on difficulties and constraints linked to creating and running an enterprise” to the school subject list. Pity the poor teacher who has to interest an average adolescent in the latter.

There has been much talk of the Franco-German motor that has traditionally propelled the European Union breaking down recently. So the cancellation of a meeting last week between the two countries to discuss proposals to cut pollution from cars led to plenty of puns.

The German press said the process has stalled but the French government said that was overblown. Whatever happens, the two biggest automakers in the European Union will have to strike a deal over  whose companies will have to make the biggest changes to ensure the European Union meets - or at least comes close to - its climate change targets.

The gas-guzzling, supercharged German machines have a head start. Angela Merkel’s government has made clear that the continent’s biggest producer cannot accept European Commission plans for swingeing fines from 2012 for manufacturers who do not hit targets. Brussels’ draft directive calls for a 25 per cent cut to an average emission of 120g or carbon per kilometre by 2012.

Savvy punters in Brussels expect the date to slip to 2015.  The European parliament, its members having one eye on the car plants in their constituencies, has already voted in favour of this.

ACEA, the carmakers’ lobby group, argues that since it takes five years to design a car they need that time to come up with the necessary models. And 6 out of 10 cars on the road now will still be on the road in 2012. Arguments that ACEA itself signed up voluntarily to such a target a decade  ago are rebutted. Governments did not keep their side of the bargain through tax breaks, improving congestion and other measures to encourage consumers to embrace smaller cars, it says.

France, like Italy, makes smaller cars so is closer to the 2012 target and has less to lose. However, it also inherits the presidency of the EU in July and is desperate for some big successes. They are not going to come without German co-operation. France wants an outline deal by the time EU environment ministers meet in June.

Gloomy Commission officials and green groups expect a compromise that would put the EU even further off course from its target of cutting emissions by 20 per cent between 1990 and 2020. The meeting may have been cancelled but a Greenpeace protest went ahead. Transport is the only sector where emissions are growing and the European Environment Agency has already determined that the Commission’s car package is not radical enough.

If one sector does less, then others must do more. Allowing cars to burn more carbon will mean factories, power stations or households will have to burn even less.

This race is nowhere near as predictable as a grand prix, however. As one of those behind the wheel observed, national trade-offs between issues can produce unpredictable results. This race will be won on the last bend.

The daily press briefing at the European Commission’s star-shaped Berlaymont HQ in Brussels is an event rarely noted for its humour.

Yesterday’s menu, for example, included questions to the Commission on the subjects of organised crime in Bulgaria, a court judgment on Sweden’s alcohol taxation rules, the Macedonian elections, and Greek asylum policy, among others.  

So you might see why a bizarre exchange yesterday between journalists and a spokesperson over the age of a new, female commissioner was rather out of the ordinary.

A reporter said that she was writing a profile of Androulla Vassiliou, the new Cypriot commissioner responsible for health policy, and had failed to find out her exact age from her office.

In fact, the journalist said that she was told that it was very rude to ask the age of a Cypriot commissioner, but that she could say that Mrs Vassiliou was “around 65″

The spokesperson’s response at the podium was that it was indeed rude in the commissioner’s culture to ask a woman’s age.

Next came a brief exchange about whether the answer could be found on the commissioner’s online CV - it couldn’t as of Tuesday night- and if the reluctance to disclose Mrs Vassiliou’s exact age was in line with the Commission’s transparency rules. 

Tricky. 

Can national cultural mores be transported to Brussels, capital of the 27-country Europe?

Do we need to know a commissioner’s exact age? What difference does it make that, in this case, the commissioner is female? 

And does the public have a right to know such details about EU officials who make big decisions over European citizens and industry?

Apart from the fact that he is several coat sizes smaller than Jacques Chirac, what differences are there between Nicolas Sarkozy and his predecessor as French president? When it comes to China policy, not many, it would appear.

Watching Sarkozy’s swing through Xian, Beijing and Shanghai this week, I cannot have been the only European in China wondering if this wasn’t a rather splendid example of Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

The deal to sell 160 Airbus aircraft to the Chinese that was secured during Sarkozy’s visit was remarkably similar to the deal to sell 150 Airbuses that Chirac secured on his last official trip to China in October 2006.

Sarkozy’s decision not to take his human rights minister to China, and his public silence on the lashing that German chancellor Angela Merkel received from China for having met the Dalai Lama, were très chiraquien.

In Shanghai, Sarkozy even took fire at the US and Japan, saying in a speech to the city’s French community that the US should reduce its deficits and the Japanese should pay more attention to the value of the yen.

In fairness, Sarkozy had already asked the Chinese to let the renminbi rise in value. And no one can say Sarkozy wasn’t, in his own way, putting a certain kind of pressure on China. According to the China Daily newspaper, when he accepted President Hu Jintao’s invitation to attend the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Sarkozy joked: “I will attend the opening ceremony, but please reserve a nice seat for me.” 

It would be pointless to make a big deal out of all this, because Sarkozy was doing was what every European national leader does when he or she visits China – they put their own country first.

It must be something in the green tea, but European politicians seem to go light in the head when they arrive in China and come face to face with the country’s daunting size (the Beijing area alone is more than half as big as Belgium) and its breathtaking business opportunities.

The Chinese know this, of course. They can hardly be blamed for thinking the easiest thing to do when hosting a European leader is to speak a few polite but empty words on the exchange rate, praise the leader’s knowledge of China, and throw him a few billion euros’ worth of business deals before ushering him out of the door.

But in Sarkozy’s case, the deals amounted to a hefty €20bn. Chapeau! Enjoy the Olympics!

Mariann Fischer Boel is pretty upset. The farming commissioner, not afraid of using agricultural language, saw Tuesday’s outline of a modernising "health check" overshadowed by a row other why money was going to golf courses and town councils.

The “stupid” observations, made in a report the week before by the Court of Auditors, the financial watchdog, and flamed up by the “sensational press”, were overblown, she told reporters. On Wednesday she had not calmed down much. She told the European parliament’s budgetary control committee: "It is not possible to receive an EU farm subsidy for a golf course. Only areas used for agricultural activity are eligible. Of course, it is possible that golf clubs, railway companies etc may also own adjoining or nearby land which is used for farming. On this land, the subsidies can of course be paid as long as the conditions are met."

The truth is, that now payment for production has been replaced with payment for landholding, farming can mean simply keeping it in a condition to be farmed.

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Since you’re reading this, it’s not too much to assume that you’re interested in the blogsphere…

So you might want to know about a report - The online world - a new constituency - which comes out tomorrow. It’ll be posted on the website of a PR firm called Edelman.

Perhaps it is a little self-serving for a blog to write up this study. After all, it details the growing role of the medium. And yes, it can be tricky for a report to get the measure of these sorts of phenomena. Still, for what it’s worth, here are some of the core points: 

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An intriguing twist in a tale that is fast turning into one of the best dramas in the Brussels law-making machine.

It’s all to do with whether some of the biggest telecoms companies in the EU – such as Deutsche Telekom – could be forced to change the way they work, as part of efforts to bolster broadband development.

On Wednesday, the EU’s national telecoms watchdogs unanimously backed a plan that would give them the right to break up large operators if other regulatory tools had failed.

So, regulators like the idea of having more power. Big deal?

Actually, it is…

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It’s three months today since Belgium held a general election, and still there’s no new government. 

To recap: after the poll, Yves Leterme, a Flemish Christian Democrat, was poised to be the next premier.

But talks on forming a coalition of French, and Dutch, speaking-parties are deadlocked. The weird thing is how easily you can forget this.

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This report on the EU’s broadband market just landed in my inbox.

It’s by Ecta, a lobby group representing new telecoms companies that take on big, former state-run “incumbent” operators.

The study shows that EU broadband subscriptions have risen and are drawing level with the US and Japan. That said, the proportion of people signing up varies widely across member states and competition is weak in some countries.

One key point in the paper: in Britain, where regulators took radical action to split BT, the big telecoms group, the market is doing well and competition has increased.

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Scotland ’s new first minister is in town on his first overseas visit since taking up the role.

Alex Salmond said he wanted Scotland to rediscover its sense of internationalism, adding that the country understood the need to raise its game on the world stage.

He also wants more of a voice for Scotland in the EU. He highlighted small members such as Slovenia (which has a population less than half that of Scotland’s) which assumes the union’s rotating presidency next year.  “We recognise the success of so many small countries in Europe, and we aspire to the independent membership of the EU that they enjoy.”

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