Legislators adopted the resolution by 597 votes to 23 with 41 abstentions, demonstrating that it had overwhelming cross-party support. Soon the European Commission will publish a long-awaited report that for the first time will put flesh on the bones of the EU’s Arctic policy.

The problem in the Arctic is that there are no comprehensive rules governing how states should behave there. There is no system for managing fish stocks, nothing to regulate the extraction of oil and gas, and not much guidance on how to settle territorial disputes that may flare up as the polar ice recedes.

According to a US Geological Survey report published in July, the Arctic accounts for about 22 per cent of the world’s undiscovered, technically recoverable resources. That includes 13 per cent of the undiscovered oil, 30 per cent of the natural gas and 20 per cent of the natural gas liquids. It is an extraordinary, unrepeatable opportunity.

However, as was shown in August 2007 when Russian explorers planted their flag on the seabed under the North Pole, the Arctic could easily turn into a zone of clashing national interests. Moreover, the boom in shipping activities and energy exploitation may create all sorts of environmental hazards for the Arctic’s vulnerable ice-covered areas.

Joe Borg, the EU fisheries and maritime affairs commissioner, says the Commission’s report will stress three points: safeguarding the Arctic’s ecosystem, promoting the sustainable use of its resources, and putting in place a stronger system of international governance. The idea is to build on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the international environmental treaties that apply to the Arctic, and the work of various bodies such as the Arctic Council, which includes Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the US.

The EU lacks even observer status in the Arctic Council and needs to catch up quickly if it is to defend its interests in the region. Solana’s message is worth repeating: “There is an increasing need to address the growing debate over territorial claims and access to new trade routes by different countries which challenge Europe’s ability to effectively secure its trade and resource interests in the region and may put pressure on its relations with key partners.”

Thirteen years after the US-brokered Dayton agreement ended the 1992-95 civil war, Bosnia is at peace but barely qualifies as a functioning state. Its two halves, the Muslim-Croat federation and the Serb Republic, co-operate as little as possible. Its two main nationalities, the Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Serbs, are as alienated from each other as ever, a point illustrated by last weekend’s local elections across the country.

The EU’s influence in Bosnia has steadily declined, partly because the bloc has concentrated its regional efforts on Serbia and the Kosovo problem. “The political situation is Bosnia is even worse now than it was two years ago. Our ability to change it has been severely damaged,” says one EU policymaker.

This is where Russia comes in. Moscow, which for its own reasons tends to side with the Bosnian Serbs, is not eager to extend the mandate of the Office of the High Representative (OHR) in Bosnia. Under the 1995 Dayton accord, the OHR is the international authority responsible for overseeing Bosnian affairs.

The High Representative - at present, Miroslav Lajcak of Slovakia - doubles as the EU’s special representative in Bosnia. It is fair to say that, without the OHR, Bosnia would be even more unstable than it is now.

Unlike Moscow, Washington would like to see the OHR stay in place. The US sees Milorad Dodik, the Bosnian Serb leader, as a troublemaker and it is anxious not to see Bosnia descend once more into disorder.

The EU’s 27 countries are divided. But some, such as France, Germany and Italy, think the OHR is a broken instrument beyond hope of repair. Instinctively, they are on the same side of the argument as Russia.

In a month’s time, everyone will have to show their hand at a meeting of the international Steering Board that supervises the Dayton accord. Is it conceivable that the EU will formulate a position that is aligned with Russia and against the US?

Probably not. The UK, and some former communist countries in central and eastern Europe, would surely not allow it. But the Bosnia problem is a reminder of how, even on its own doorstep, the EU finds it excruciatingly hard to run a common foreign policy.

One such optimist, a genial and perceptive diplomat who has immersed himself in EU affairs for the past 30 years, suggested to me the other day that it often takes a crisis to inject real momentum into what he and others in Brussels like to call “the European project”.  For example, the 1992 crisis in the European exchange mechanism appeared to deal a serious blow to the goal of creating a single European currency. But the reaction was spirited. Only seven years later, the euro was up and running.

Similarly, it took the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington in September 2001 to prompt EU leaders into agreeing, at a summit just three months later, on the principle of a European arrest warrant. This allows the swift transfer of criminal suspects for trial and detention from one EU member-state to another. It proved effective in securing the extradition from Italy to the UK of Hussain Osman, an Ethiopian-born Briton accused of involvement in a plot to attack London’s transport system in July 2005.

On the face of things, the financial crisis offers a perfect opportunity to push forward closer European integration. If a big cross-border European financial institution fell into trouble , it would be ludicrous to argue that it was purely a matter for the government of the country where the institution has its headquarters. Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, the former Italian finance minister and European Central Bank executive board member, thinks the financial crisis merely reinforces the case for a powerful pan-European regulator that he used to make in front of his EU colleagues.

However, the response of governments so far indicates that they are not ready - yet - for a Great Leap Forward in terms of closer integration. This was well illustrated last week by the curious tale of the French plan for European bank bail-out fund, which turned out, after a feverish 24-hour news cycle, not to be a French plan for a European bank bail-out after all.

Only the Dutch authorities were brave enough to state publicly that, yes, they thought such a plan would be a pretty good idea. But given the opposition of the UK and , more importantly, Germany - still the EU’s paymaster and the country that would surely bear the brunt of the cost of such a fund - the plan was dead before it started.

Of course, European integration can come in many shapes and sizes and an EU bank bail-out fund doesn’t have to be one of them. But solidarity among all 27 EU member-states is a a fundamental principle. Without it, the EU is nothing. If a large bank fails in an EU country that does not have the resources to rescue it, it will not be long before that principle is put to the test.

Created in 2006 from the merger of Virgin Express and Sabena, the ill-fated Belgian national carrier, Brussels Airlines is a busy, friendly, no-frills company that in my experience does a good job getting you from A to B in Europe without a great deal of fuss.

With that thought in mind, let’s turn to the Brussels Airlines website and take a look at what the airline calls its ’Praise Form’. This states: ”Brussels Airlines will be delighted to hear from you if you are extremely satisfied with the service you have received. Did you have a great flight or enjoy being served by a comely stewardess? Please tell us about it …”

The Brussels-based traveller who pointed this out to me says he has trouble with the very concept of a ‘Praise Form’, since it is implicitly discouraging you from criticising the service you’ve received.

Be that as it may, the phrase that caught my eye was the one about the “comely stewardess”. It seemed so politically incorrect by today’s standards that I had a look at the French-language version of the same ‘Praise Form’. This reads: ”… or if you have been charmed by the professionalism of our employees …”  

So why are English-language customers prompted to sigh with extreme satisfaction and recall the services provided by comely stewardesses, whilst French-language customers are sternly reminded of the professionalism of Brussels Airlines staff?

I don’t know, but I imagine Lufthansa - which is in the process of buying 45 per cent of Brussels Airlines - will want to do something about it.

Only a few months ago it launched a new advertising campaign.  It was a nice catchy slogan, too. ”Here today. Where tomorrow?”

Where indeed? As self-fulfilling prophecies go, this was right up there with the Oedipus legend.

Yet the slogan also brings to mind what many Belgians and other people see as the grievous condition of Belgium itself. The Belgian state is here today, as it has been for the past 177 years, but where will it be tomorrow?

The gulf between the prosperous, Dutch-speaking northern region of Flanders and the less prosperous, French-speaking southern region of Wallonia is so wide that, apart from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Belgium must be classified these days as Europe’s most internally divided country.

Belgium has been in almost total political paralysis since a general election in June 2007, with Flemish and Walloon parties unable to agree a deal on more autonomy for the regions. Only a week before Fortis was bailed out, Prime Minister Yves Leterme’s government was brought to its knees when a Flemish nationalist party withdrew its support.

Yet this is by no means the whole story. Perhaps the most important lesson from the Fortis drama is that, when the chips were down, the Belgian government and Belgian regulators were able to co-ordinate a rapid emergency intervention to save the company.

It wasn’t other banks or the private sector that rescued Fortis. It wasn’t Flanders and it wasn’t Wallonia. It was, together with the Netherlands and Luxembourg, the much-maligned Belgian state. Two days later, the Belgian state helped shore up the finances of Dexia, the Franco-Belgian financial services group.

No wonder Leterme was confident enough to appear on Belgian TV on Tuesday evening and say pointedly that, “as a new shareholder” in Fortis, the Belgian government would not be happy if the bank awarded a €4m-5m payoff to Herman Verwilst, the former chief executive.

So, three cheers for Belgium - and a loud raspberry for the people who dreamed up Fortis’s advertising campaign!

In six EU countries - the Benelux trio, Denmark, Germany and the UK - we have seen emergency state intervention over the past few days to rescue or nationalise collapsing banks and mortgage lenders. In each case, the action would not have been necessary had it not been for the financial upheavals in the US.

Yet for most of September, EU finance ministers and other high-ranking officials were at pains to assure us that Europe would be only mildly exposed to any financial contagion emanating from the US.

It wasn’t true then, and it certainly isn’t true now. According to the International monetary Fund, European banks’ aggregate exposure to US subprime mortgages is roughly 73 per cent of the exposure of US banks. Moreover many European banks have become highly leveraged in recent years, leaving themselves with few escape routes when credit conditions tighten and they face unexpected losses and writedowns.

But this is not the first example of European complacency. Last January and February, EU policymakers - such as Jean-Claude Juncker,  head of the eurozone’s finance ministers’ group, and Joaquín Almunia, the EU monetary affairs commissioner - loftily dismissed suggestions that Europe’s economy might fall into serious trouble as a result of the US downturn. Europe was more self-sufficient, pursued better balanced policies and was more resilient, was the message.

Less than a year later, the major European economies - France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK - are all either in recession or on the brink. Between April and June, the eurozone suffered its first quarter-on-quarter contraction of GDP since the euro’s launch in 1999.

One can sympathise with the yearning of European policymakers to be “decoupled” from the US, in an economic sense. They see it as an affirmation of independence and the basis for a firmer European identity in the future. Some policymakers even seem to speak quite deliberately in terms that put political goals first and economic reality second.

But now reality is hitting the EU hard on the head. The attractions of wishful thinking have never seemed less persuasive.

One month after the Kremlin embarked on the path of dismembering Georgia by recognising Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states, what is most striking is how negatively the rest of the world has reacted. As far as I can tell, only Nicaragua has followed Moscow’s lead to the point of full recognition. Even Belarus, the former Soviet republic closest to Moscow, has held back.

Elsewhere, sympathy for the Russian position has come from Azerbaijan’s Armenian-controlled enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. All things considered, not a very impressive collection of supporters.

The most important expression of displeasure at Russia’s action, though carefully coded, came from China. For Beijing, the formal recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia was an attack on the principles of territorial integrity and non-interference in other states’ domestic affairs that the Chinese regard as sacrosanct.

As Bobo Lo, an expert at the Centre for European Reform think-tank, puts it: “The analogy that matters is not Tibet or Xinjiang - long under de facto as well as de jure control - but Taiwan… Moscow’s recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia establishes a dangerous precedent, whereby de facto control supported by a dominant external power can introduce new realities.”

Russia has not merely isolated itself but left itself “more friendless than at any time in the past 60 years”, Bobo Lo argues.

This presents opportunities for the EU. European leaders worry about their over-reliance on Russian energy supplies, and about Russia’s meddling in its former sphere of control in eastern Europe. But doesn’t China’s anger at Moscow’s attempted partition of Georgia create an opening for the EU to develop a closer strategic relationship with Beijing?

In a sense, such a move would replay Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger’s use of “the China card” in the early 1970s. Of course, it would get nowhere without the support of the British, French and German - the EU’s dominant foreign policy players. But, as it happens, one or two European government ministers are already thinking along these lines.

Who, I wonder, will be Europe’s Nixon?

Thanks to some good reporting by the Irish Times and the Czech newspaper Lidové Noviny, we now know a little more about Ganley. The Czech paper discovered that Ganley had paid a visit to Prague in late July and met President Václav Klaus, the Czech head of state. Klaus is a notorious eurosceptic who, immediately after the Irish vote, declared the Lisbon treaty dead - something not even President Lech Kaczynski of Poland or Gordon Brown, the UK premier, dared do.

As you’d expect, Klaus and Ganley got on like a house on fire. But when the Irish Times asked Ganley for his impressions of Klaus, this was his reply: “He has an amazing background of standing up to the Soviets and is a national hero in the Czech Republic.”

Ah-hem, not quite, Declan. Klaus was a young economist during the Prague Spring, which was crushed by Soviet tanks in August 1968. He worked at the Czechoslovak State Bank from 1971 to 1986, during the long dreary years of repression under Gustáv Husák, the Communist party leader installed after the Soviet-led invasion.

Klaus was certainly no party hack, but to talk of his “amazing” resistance to the Soviet Union is  farcical, as any Czech will tell you. As for his being a “national hero” - dozens of Czechs are drowning in laughter in their beer as I write.

All of which goes to show that running an effective political campaign is not the same as knowing your history.

When the EU published its first ever Security Strategy in 2003, it identified the US as its closest ally and and five other powers with which it sought ”strategic partnerships” - Canada, China, India, Japan and Russia. Among those five, ties with Russia are under the greatest strain. But it is with India that the EU has its most under-developed relationship.

True, bilateral trade has more than doubled since 2003 and totalled more than €55bn last year. But the EU-Indian negotiations on a free trade agreement, which started in June 2007, are making slow progress and will not be concluded by the end of this year, as once hoped.

The EU frequently complains about India’s restrictive trade barriers and regulatory regime and say access to important sectors such as aviation, banking, insurance and telecommunications is difficult for foreign investors. India, for its part, rejects both the EU’s demands for more cuts in industrial tariffs and the EU’s stance on global climate change, saying it is a developing country that is under no obligation to slow its modernisation.

Wider strategic co-operation between India and the EU is affected by India’s view of itself as an emerging power that aspires to a bigger global role. The EU says it welcomes this, but when India lays claim to a seat on the UN Security Council - a perfectly reasonable request - it rapidly falls victim to the subtle national rivalries at play on this issue in the EU between France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK.

That issue aside, however, there ought be more intense co-operation between the EU and India on issues ranging from counter-terrorism and weapons of mass destruction to food security and failed or failing states. On Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and China, there is much the EU and India can and should do together. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

As the European Union’s longest-serving prime minister and chairman of the ‘eurogroup’, which unites the eurozone’s 15 finance ministers, you would hardly have expected Juncker to answer this question in the affirmative. And indeed, he replied: “No … Something in my heart is telling me that the British will be happy [one day] to join the single currency.”

On the substance of the question, however, Juncker made the point that the disruptions to the individual national economies of the eurozone would surely have been far greater over the past 10 years if there had been no euro.

He listed the decade’s seismic events: 9/11, the Iraq war (which deeply divided European governments), the French and Dutch rejections of the EU’s constitutional treaty in 2005, the global financial market upheavals of the past 13 months. He even mentioned the increasingly worrying political paralysis in Belgium.

“Do you really think the European economy would be in better shape if we had had national currencies?” he asked. Would national central banks in Europe have been able to produce a better co-ordinated response than the European Central Bank and Jean-Claude Trichet, its president, had done during the market turmoil of recent months?

Then came Juncker’s masterstroke. “Would 15 or 16 Trichets be outperforming one Trichet? I don’t think so. Personally, I really think one Trichet is enough, by the way.”