The Robert Schuman Foundation has just published the fourth edition of "The State of the Union 2010, Schuman Report on Europe" with publishing house, Lignes de Repères. This edition will be presented in Brussels on 24th March at the European Parliament together with Joseph Daul, Chair of the EPP group and Alain Lamassoure, Chair of the Budgets Committee who wrote an article entitled "Are we moving towards a European tax? Europe in search of a real budget." This reference work is available in bookshops and on the Foundation's internet site. Order it!

On 15th March the 16 Finance Ministers of the euro area looked into the measures taken to face the crisis and on the reduction of competitiveness imbalance between the 16 countries. After the withdrawal of support measures to the financial sector and once recovery is assured it will be necessary to implement similar measures to the product and labour markets. The exit strategy has to take on board credible structural reforms. Ministers said they wanted to improve governance of the euro area notably by using new measures included in the Lisbon Treaty to guarantee the respect of the stability and growth pact, to address clearer, more ambitious recommendations to States and to enhance multilateral surveillance, benchmarking and communication as well as the profile of the Eurogroup.

After his meeting on 16th March with Nika Gilauri, Georgian Prime Minister, the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy reviewed the bilateral relations between the EU and Georgia as part of the Eastern Partnerhsip. Mr Van Rompuy spoke of negotiations for an association agreement that would include a free-trade area, that should start soon. Georgia is also the only country in the south Caucasus to have successfully completed negotiations for the facilitation of visa delivery and readmission agreements that are due to be signed in June. Finally the President of the European Council recalled the Union's support to democracy and the territorial integrity of Georgia and its commitment to help settle the conflict between this country and Russia.

The 27 European Finance Ministers expressed their support of Greece on 16th March with regard to its work to reduce its deficit. In preparation for the European Council on 25th and 26th March they adopted conclusions on the EU2020 strategy, the progressive withdrawal of aid to the financial sector, the employment markets and products and funding in the fight against climate change. Ministers established priorities for the Union's 2011 budget and looked into draft directives that aim to simplify VAT invoicing conditions, enhance mutual assistance between Member States to recover taxes and to fight against fraud in the exchange of CO2 quotas. However they did not come to agreement on the regulation of speculative funds. Spain withdrew this issue from the agenda so that the widest possible support could be found - it continues to make this one of its priorities however.

On 17th March the European Commission published assessments of the credibility of the stability and convergence programmes of 14 Member States and expressed its concern about forecasts to reduce deficit in several of these countries, including France and the UK. These deficits have increased to historical levels because of the crisis. For a majority of the cases under examination growth hypotheses that support budgetary forecasts are believed to be "rather optimistic" which means that budgetary results might not be as good as planned. In addition to this in several cases the strategy put forward to balance the budget did not include enought concrete measures. Amongst the 14 countries only Bulgaria and Estonia plan to maintain their public deficit below the 3% reference value of the GDP.

MEPs of the Environment Committee voted on 16th March 52 votes in favour 2 against on the nutritional labelling of food products which must provide legible, easy-to-understand information, notably on kilocalorie energy and on fat, saturated fat, carbohydrates, sugar and salt content so that consumers can make informed choices. This resolution will be presented for vote in the Parliament in May.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel defended the draft finance law presented by her government to the Bundestag on 17th March. She justified the extent of the deficit (80 billion euros) with the imperatives of the economic crisis: the funding of partial unemployment, recovery plans and what is more social spending. This led to the establishment of new growth bases and now the idea is to manage the exit to the crisis and pay back deficits. This budget was adopted on 19th March by the Bundestag. The Chancellor also called on other European countries to apply budgetary discipline to guarantee the stability of the euro area. She re-iterted that speculation had simply made the Greek crisis worse. The challenge from the markets with regard to Athens grew from the non-respect of the Stability and Growth Pact criteria over the last few years. In the future she believes that the euro area will need new tools to be able to exclude countries which infringe the common rule long term.

Austrian Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger hosted his Slovenian counterpart Samuel Zbogar on 16th March. The two diplomatic heads hope to settle the quarrel over bilingual town-signs in Carinthia. They put forward a joint initiative that aims to enhance the European perspectives of the Western Balkan countries. Both countries support the relaxation of the visa regime with Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania and hope to enhance exchanges between youth groups. They hope to strengthen bilateral economic cooperation also.

On 19th March Belgium decided to extend its military presence in Afghanistan until the end of 2011, adhering to a total of 626 men but providing more time for the training of Afghan soldiers said the Foreign Office. The present mandate of Belgian soldiers will end in principle at the end of 2010. By extending this by 12 months Yves Leterme's government will guarantee Belgian presence in Afghanisatn beyond the next general elections which will take place in Belgium in June 2011 at the latest.

On 18th March the Bulgarian government approved the appointment of a new minister responsible for the European funds, Tomislav Dontchev, former director of the Open Society institute in Sofia and mayor of Gabrovo. Mr Dontchev has a difficult task ahead in monitoring the Union's financial projects, accelerating the spending of these funds whilst preventing fraud which the country was punished for by the Commission. In 2008 the latter froze 825 million euros in pre-acession funds because there was a suspicion of embezzlement. The Commission released seven programmes in February to a total of 6.4 billion euros but a Bulgarian parliamentary committee believes that the country may lose most of these European funds because 1.3% had been spent in reality.

On 16th March in a joint press release German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed their concern about the conditions which led to the American group Northrop Grumman and its European Partner EADS to abandon the competition for the market of the future supply tankers for the US Air Force once they were convinced that the call for tender published by the American authorities would be to the advantage of Boeing. The two leaders recalled that the US Air Force's choice focused in 2008 on the plan put forward by Northrop Grumman and EADS after an initial cancellation by the American Congress with regard to the attribution of the market to Boeing. Both leaders said that transatlantic economic relations had to be based on open markets and fair competition and that all temptation of a protectionist nature had to be cast aside including in the area of defence. Since on 18th March the deadline was brought up to 90 days (instead of 60) EADS is now assessing the new conditions set in the call for tender.

Prime Minister George Papandreou indicated on 17th March after joint declarations with the President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso that Greece was looking at all possible options including the use of the IMF, its final choice depended on the decisions taken by the European Council on 25th and 26th March.

The Latvian government coalition lost the parliamentary majority on 17th March after the withdrawal of the People's Party after a dispute with regard to austerity measures implemented to face the economic crisis. The party's chair, Andris Skele said that this decision was taken after Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis refused to sign a bilateral agreement with him to freeze tax increases.

Czech Environment Minister Jan Dusik (Greens) announced that he was resigning on 18th March due to a difference in opinion with the Prime Minister over the renovation of a pollutant coal power plant. Czech President Vaclav Klaus accepted this resignation on 19th March.

Romania is the first European country to have observed the presence of the H5N1 virus on its territory for the last year. The European Commission confirmed on 16th March the danger areas defined by the Romanian authorities, close to a chicken farm in the town of Letea in the South East of the country which have been acknowledged as being contaminated by bird flu. To limit the spread of the virus, the Romanian authorities immediately applied the measures planned for by European norms notably the destruction of all chickens from the infected farms and the establishment of a quarantine area of 3km and a surveillance zone of 10km around the farm.

During a joint press conference with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on 17th March British Prime Minister Gordon Brown repeated the UK's support of Turkey's accession to the EU. The Union would in his opinion benefit from Turkey's "cultural, economic and political strength". Mr Brown believes that the "reform process led by Mr Erdogan will lead to the removal of the remaining obstacles to membership." He called on the Turkish and Greek leaders to be "courageous" in negotiations over Cyprus. The two government heads also mentioned the Iranian issue and said they were against the development of nuclear arms in the region.

The leaders of the six Western Balkan countries and the European Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Füle met on 20th March in Slovenia albeit without Serbia to try and boost the region's European integration process. "We have been able to pin point the region's main problem: everyone has to acknowledge everyone else," declared Slovenian Prime Minister Borut Pahor. "It is a fundamental issue which is an impediment to the process (to European integration)".

The IMF published its preliminary conclusions of its mission in Albania. According to the Funds' observers the stimuli policy undertaken by the Albanian government has made it possible to reduce the damaging effects of the international crisis on the country's economy but it is now time to return to greater budgetary discipline, otherwise the macro-economic balance will be in peril. Economists are planning on low growth in 2010 in a context of slow world growth and where most effort to recover will be assumed by the State budget. Finally the IMF insists on the need to undertake structural reform to guarantee continued mid-term growth of the Albanian economy.

The Belarus police forces undertook searches at the head of the most influential opposition website, charter97.org, Narodnaïa Volia (The Will of the People). The Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) expressed its "indignation" and condemned the searches in a press release.

On 17th March in an interview of British TV channel BBC Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that of the 170,000 Armenians living in the country only 70,000 were Turkish citizens and that the others who did not have a working permit might be expulsed. Mr Erdogan said that those people were not fellow citizens and he was therefore not obliged to keep them. This declaration comes shortly after the resolutions adopted by American and Swedish MPs condemning the Armenian genocide of 1915. The Turkish government still refuses the definition of genocide for the mass murders that took place on the fringe of the First World War. His Armenian counterpart Tigran Sarkisian said that this kind of declaration "did not help to improve relations between the two States." Normalisation of relations between the neighbours is however a necessary condition for the continuation of negotiations to join the EU.

According to data published on 16th March by Eurostat the annual inflation rate in the euro area lay at 0.9% in February 2010 in comparison with 1% in January whilst the monthly inflation rate lay at 0.3%. In the Union the annual inflation rate lay at 1.4% in February, in comparison with 1.7% in January, and the monthly rate lay at 0.3%. The lowest annual rates were seen in Latvia (-4.3%) and Ireland (-2.4%) and the highest were in Hungary (5.6%), Romania (4.5%) and in Poland (3.4%).

The protection of the environment should become part of a new economic rescue plan for Greece according to an OECD report published on 15th March. OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria declared that "green policies and economic growth could be enhanced to create new jobs by promoting cleaner technologies." According to the report green taxes would have to be increased and their scope widened to improve public finance. Green tax revenues have fallen significantly since the mid 1990's in Greece and now only represent 2% of the GDP, much less than in other European countries. To improve the environment without affecting public spending the report advises on making producers and users of pollutant products pay and to stop subsidies being given to environment damaging activities.

The Center for European Reform has published a study entitled "The Lisbon Scorecard X: The Road to 2020". The Lisbon Strategy has not succeeded in fulfilling its promises. Few European States are prospering from an economic point of view. With public funds in poor shape, an ageing population and nascent tension in the euro area the Union has to provide new impetus to its reforms. Its EU2020 strategy requires a strong governance method, with a public peformance ranking in each country and it should pay greater attention to competence and innovation.

The Pablo Picasso Graphik-Museum in Münster is putting on an exhibition from 5th March to 6th June 2010 of Joan Miro's work entitled "The Colour of his Dreams". On exhibit are more than 100 pieces of work representing the poetic work of Miro: paintings, drawings, sculptures, ceramics ... The selection of work covers over 50 years of the artist's life.