Beleaguered Japanese officials are already grappling with a humanitarian crisis wrought by a biblical earthquake and tsunami, and the prospect of apocalyptic meltdowns at a pair of stricken nuclear reactors. Add to their list of woes one European commissioner.
That would be Gunther Oettinger, the energy commissioner, whose ill-judged remarks about the crisis on Wednesday have helped to make a bad situation worse. Read more
In this morning’s paper, we have a scoop on the contents of the draft conclusions for today’s European summit, which were circulated to heads of government by Herman Van Rompuy, the European Council president, ahead of the meeting.
As is our practice here at the Brussels Blog, we thought we’d give our readers a deeper dive into the document itself by posting its contents, with some explanatory annotations. We’re just posting the segments on the eurozone economy; there are several pages on energy and innovation, which is the nominal main subject of the summit.
The section on the debt crisis is included as an addendum at the end of the conclusions and entitled “Statement by the Heads of State or Government of the Euro Area and the EU Institutions”. Be forewarned that this could change over lunch, when leaders debate its contents: Read more
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, was one of the last to arrive at the pre-summit gathering of centre-right leaders outside Brussels, but on the way in, she had some calming words to offer.
Some diplomats had feared Merkel would insist on new language to be included in the otherwise benign treaty amendment scheduled to be debated tonight, making the approval process more complicated.
But she told reporters she is backing “very limited treaty change”, a signal there will likely be little opposition from Berlin. Read more
The opening feature of any EU summit is the gathering of heads of government at their partisan caucuses. These days none is more important than the European People’s Party, the right-wing EU coalition that includes Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and Silvio Berlusconi. Read more
The call by Angela Merkel to reopen the European Union’s treaties in a major address to the Bundestag is already generating reaction from heads of government in other member states as they begin descending on Brussels for a two-day summit.
Ms Merkel worked the phones the day before the summit, calling several of her counterparts in an attempt to shore up support – a sign of just how precarious her position is and her need to come out of the summit with a victory following intense criticism at home for her political deal-making to win over reluctant allies. Read more
Greece has got a pat on the back in its first post-bailout report from the European Commission, the ECB and the IMF. “The programme is off to a very strong start,” they said in Athens. So that should be a green light for the next €9bn tranche of the total €110bn rescue package to be paid out next month.
But there is a fly in the ointment. Plucky little Slovakia, a eurozone member state that knows all about tough austerity measures, is refusing to sign up for its contribution to the rescue plan.
In spite of fierce pressure from Brussels, the new government in Bratislava is adamant that it would be wrong to pay its hard-earned taxpayers’ money to another eurozone member that has “consistently carried out irresponsible fiscal policy.” It is prepared to back the European Financial Stability Facility – the €750bn standby rescue package set up to stop contagion from the Greek crisis – but not the original Greek bailout. Read more
Reforming the management of economic policy, primarily in the eurozone but also in the European Union as a whole, is without question one of Europe’s highest priorities. Few steps would do more to raise the EU’s credibility with the US, China and the rest of the world than concerted action to improve European economic performance and make the euro area function more efficiently as a unit. Much of this comes under the heading of “economic governance”. But the difficulty is that it is not always easy to figure out which Europeans are in charge of the process.
On Monday Herman Van Rompuy, the EU’s full-time president, chaired the latest meeting of a task force on economic governance that he was chosen last March to lead. The task force, consisting largely of EU finance ministers, came up with various sensible ideas on tightening sanctions (financial and non-financial) on countries that break European fiscal rules. Task force members also want to strengthen the monitoring of macroeconomic imbalances, such as the gap between large current account surpluses in Germany and deficits in southern Europe. Read more
As the EU prepares for its summit at the end of the week, the FT’s senior foreign affairs columnist Gideon Rachman chairs a debate with Mats Persson of Open Europe and Charles Grant of the Centre for European Economic Reform. They discuss the tensions between France and Germany over the southern European members’ debt crisis, and the call for greater budget scrutiny, which the UK is questioning.
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Peter Spiegel is the FT's Brussels bureau chief. He returned to the FT in August 2010 after spending five years covering foreign policy and national security issues from Washington for the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, focusing on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He first joined the FT in 1999 covering business regulation and corporate crime in its Washington bureau, before spending four years covering military affairs and the defence industry in London and Washington.
Joshua Chaffin is one of the FT's EU correspondents, covering areas including policies on trade, the environment and energy. He has worked in the FT's Brussels bureau since late 2008 and before that was an FT correspondent in New York and Washington DC. 
Alex Barker is EU correspondent, covering the single market, financial regulation and competition. He was formerly an FT political correspondent in the UK and joined the FT in 2005.
James Fontanella-Khan is FT's Brussels correspondent, covering media, telecom and internet regulation as well as justice, employment and social affairs and its impact on eastern Europe. He was formerly an FT correspondent in India. He joined the FT in 2006. 
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Gideon Rachman and his FT colleagues debate international affairs on The World blog.
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