VAT bid flickers on energy-saving bulbs

Is Syria serious?

EP President Pöttering returns from a changing Middle East, but will the changes stick?

Bosnia's long goodbye

Sheltered from the pressures that customarily threaten private companies, public institutions rarely go out of business. Self-perpetuation tends to triumph over under-performance. But an even stranger form of artificial immortality is currently on display in the western Balkans. The Office of the High Representative (OHR), the international body set up explicitly as a temporary measure in 1995 to oversee peace efforts in Bosnia and Herzegovina, remains in operation precisely because of under-performance.

Lisbon Agenda endorsement

EU leaders approved the second three-year cycle of the Lisbon Agenda for growth and jobs.

Afghan mission on target

According to Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German foreign minister, the EU's police training mission in Afghanistan was the subject of the most substantive discussion during the foreign ministers' dinner on Thursday evening.

Harmony replaces discord at the European Council

Concessions made to the concerns of energy-intensive industries.