Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

After a weekend off I am back on the watch and wait in .

The team here, pathetically, eagerly consume every last scrap of news from our colleagues in Belgrade about and the intentions of Serbian judges. For its part, the European Union, after a meeting of ambassadors, has decided not to offer Serbia another carrot by helping with trade links: as I wrote last week, they are waiting for a signal from the prosecutor here. Still, my holiday is booked from tomorrow and it is my sad prediction that I will leave here without covering the story. You have to expect anyone based in Brussels to be very serious about their summer leave.

By the time I come back, Mr Karadzic will hopefully no longer be a story, although the hunt for his former military chief Ratko Mladic and the Serbian path towards the EU certainly will be.

I have just been bashing out a note to my bureau chief about what will be keeping us busy in the back half of the year. Here are some of the thoughts, although just as battle plans don't survive first contact with the enemy, templates for news and current affairs coverage are bent out of shape by first contact with stuff that's happening. Still, what the Irish government does about the No vote on the must remain high on the agenda. to look at reasons and perhaps solutions seems in trouble, with the opposition not keen to take part. points to another No if they were asked to vote again, and I can see this getting kicked into longer and longer grass. If that is the case, are the French and Germans really going to block Croatia and others from ?

That means we have to keep a watchful eye if any parts of the Lisbon Treaty are implemented without the treaty passing into law. Diplomats are alive to the dangers of how this looks, but some will reason that just because something is in the treaty it doesn't mean it can never be achieved without the treaty.

A bigger concern for most of us, of course, is ever-rising costs and the gloomy outlook for the economy. Spain is really suffering from the collapse of the building bubble and I am interested in the strains that the different impact on the oil, food and credit crisis has in different countries and what strains that puts on the eurozone.

How will for further defence co-operation progress? Whoever is the next US president, they want Europe to spend more on defence, and take up more of the burden, whether within Nato or the EU. If the US elects paradoxically the argument could grow sharper.

In Turkey, if the party in power, the AK Party the majority voted for, is because of its Islamic roots and allegedly Islamic ambitions it will cause a crisis that will surely have an impact beyond Turkey itself. The secularist purists in the state and army establishment will see this as their chance to take control again, this time using the law instead of tanks. The supreme court has already issued a warning which translates as saying that journalistic and political arguments that it is part of the "deep state" will be considered contempt of court. But how would Europe and the US react to such a constitutional coup?

The European Parliament (in the first half of the year) will be busy, trying to cram a lot of work in before Christmas. With the elections in June of next year inevitably MEPs will want to spend much of 2009 in their own countries campaigning, so the autumn and winter of this year are the time to get through the remaining legislation, particularly things that the Commission is keen on.

Not an exhaustive list, but enough to keep us all thinking over the summer.

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I'm having one of those days off which doesn't really feel like it. I am still on watch and wait for the accused in a helicopter. But as it looks as if Karadzic won't arrive before Monday, I am back at home, for the first time in three weeks, rather than in The Hague. It means I am observing the other big European story on TV, rather than in person. I would have loved to have been among the crowds in Berlin to see Barack Obama.

How much is this European enthusiasm for him, or just a chance to gawp at a celeb? Bit of both, of course. It is always dangerous to talk about "European attitudes towards America" (or anything else) when there are so many divisions of opinion within any of the 27 European Union countries, let alone between them.

But...I am going to anyway. It is broadly true to say that most leaders of the EU nations would like to see the United States engaged in the world, able to use its overwhelming military strength, but with an administration that is much more cautious about how and when it does this. This is probably the majority feeling even in countries like Poland, Britain and Italy, where the governments backed the Iraq war. The enthusiasm for an engaged US is stronger in "New Europe", the ex-communist East, than in the West.

As for the peoples of Europe, in France, Spain, Germany and of course other countries there is a strong feeling that the US has often not used its power wisely or well. Of course there are huge shades of grey within this coalition of the unwilling. At one end of this scale, those who would deplore all American military action, perhaps allowing that the intervention in the two world wars was a good thing. At the other end, those who would applaud most interventions, from the Balkan conflict to Afghanistan, but draw the line at Iraq.

Some, including some of my colleagues, call this "anti-Americanism", but I am not sure that being against a perception of a country's foreign policy, even over a long period of time, is the same as being anti the country. Of course it is true that there are many in France who dislike Coca-Cola and Hollywood movies, but both sell pretty well there and I haven't noticed even a Left Bank distaste for blue jeans, American music and literature. It seems pretty clear that one could be against present-day Irish neutrality or German militarism of the past without being viscerally anti-Irish or anti-German. Indeed, isn't it the same as those who argue that someone can be anti-EU without being anti-European?

Still, Obama's speech was a mixture of tough and tender that many Europeans would applaud.

It is no wonder that the spotlight is trained relentlessly him, and a recent fascinating highlights an electoral barometer that suggests he can't lose. It would justify this sometimes monocular view of the presidential race.

Still it is surprising there hasn't been more European reaction to Obama's rival John McCain. I"ve just been reading a fascinating, if highly critical, analysis of his politics called by . He concludes that McCain wants the States to "embrace its role as global cop", putting more money into the US military and increasing troop numbers by 150,000. This would be so there could be more Americans on foreign soil to back the mission of "rogue state roll-back". Welch writes this is driven by the assumption "that America should hit the accelerator on the drive to further global dominance... this approach borders on expanding US power for its own sake".

Whether or not this overstates the case, McCain wouldn't get as warm a welcome in Berlin, let alone Paris, as Obama. More, I hope, on the uncertainty of this unspecial relationship, next week.

Just to clear up a couple of points: for those who want me to say sorry for calling The Hague the capital: yes, I am sorry and kicking myself for stupidity, so another sorry for not saying sorry (I have learnt something from the McCain book). But no-one has yet answered my question "What makes a city the capital?" Just government declaration or something more definable?

"How long did it take the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ to find out the Karadzic website was a fake?" someone asked rather scornfully. Less than an hour. But I was busy doing radio and TV and didn't have time to post that fact here: it was quite clear I wasn't prepared to treat it at face value. But wait, there's more. My colleague Christian Fraser, who is in Belgrade, interviewed Zoran Pavlovich, who says he helped to set up for Dr Dave, and this does appear to be genuine.

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Yes, we worked out in the end the Karadzic blog is a fake: the domain name was bought three days ago.

And sorry about calling The Hague the capital. But this truly surprises me - I though the whole point was that the seat of government WAS the capital, rather than the main city, hence Washington not New York, Canberra not Sydney, and so on. So what is the definition of "capital city"?

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The Chinese herbalist has not yet arrived in the cell being made ready for him. Not only did Radovan Karadzic have the gall to appear on video at alternative medicine conferences, he even had his . I don't know for sure if this is genuine, but check it out. Also check out the e-mail address -some things are beyond irony: healingwounds@dragandabic.com

Behind the jutting-out razor wire and high walls on the outskirts of The Hague are 37 prisoners, all accused or convicted war criminals. Eight TV trucks and many fellow hacks wait to see when a helicopter may fly over those sturdy walls and deliver a 38th. It probably won't be today: his lawyer says Mr Karadzic has three days to appeal, and he's going to leave it to the very last moment.

The prison is a 10-minute drive away from the . It is where Mr Karadzic's eventual fate will be pronounced, but it is also where Serbs should turn their ears to hear more immediate news of their country's future. It will come from a man who should understand the complexity of ethnic disputes - he is from Belgium's German-speaking minority. took over at the beginning of this year from Carla del Ponte as the tribunal's chief prosecutor. The European Union will take its cue from him. If he says Serbia is "co-operating fully" then it will be rewarded by the EU.

So far the EU's foreign ministers have been cautious. They've praised the fact of the arrest, but they don't want to fall over themselves rewarding Serbia too early. The Swedes, Belgians and Dutch are particularly concerned not to count their war criminals before they are all caught. But if Mr Brammertz speaks out then a meeting of EU ambassadors is likely to look at ways of offering an improved trade deal and they could look at something that matters to a lot of Serbs - loosening the visa requirements for visiting EU countries.

BoraTok (comment 11 yesterday) makes a good point: what is the link between a criminal being caught and their country joining the EU? Most European Union governments are, if not wracked with guilt, at least deeply aware of their multiple failures in the Yugoslav civil wars and want to ensure that region never again returns to violence. They believe that depends on a somewhat penitent Serbia joining most of the rest of Europe in the EU, and using that organisation as a forum for solving regional disputes, rather than what might be called more traditional methods. There is a lot you could question in the last sentence, but I am explaining how they think, not promoting it.

While Serbs wait to hear whether the EU will reward their government, we drum our thumbs at The Hague. This sort of story is what is often at the core of hard news. Not just an interesting tale with real significance. I rather mean a lot of frantic rushing around, followed by a lot of waiting around. And then, I suspect a picture of a helicopter.

It also fits one of my definitions of a classic news story: something that manages to be a complete surprise and utterly predictable. I was just about to resume the Newsnight filming I wrote about earlier, after a short break (Mick aka Slugger reveals my whereabouts in his .) I had a mad journey that started at seven o'clock in a field in Dorset, and then delivered me in London for a lunchtime meeting, carried on by tube and train to Surrey to pick up my bag, and ended up in a Berlin hotel at just after midnight. As I switched on the TV, a breaking news flash starts crawling across the bottom of the screen and I started re-packing my bags and phoning the news desk.

That's what I mean. To me and everyone else a complete and total surprise that it happened at that moment (which excites journalists), but predictable in that it would happen at some time (which reassures journalists). But it was also a surprise that it was Mr Karadzic who was caught first. Many thought he really was out of reach, in the mountains or overseas, but that the fugitive Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic could be found quickly if the will was there. But no-one I have spoken to thinks there is any deeper interpretation to be read into this fact. But it's something to talk about while we wait for a fleeting glimpse of a helicopter.

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I am in The Hague, awaiting the arrival of that white-bearded practitioner of alternative medicine and accused war criminal, Radovan Karadzic.

Would he be under arrest without the soft power and diplomacy of the European Union? And what does his arrest say about Serbia today?

Is it the lure of one day possibly joining the EU that has led Serbia to deliver up the man who is just a few notches off the top of the world's most wanted list?

Most diplomats in Brussels would have little doubt that their canny handling of the issue has led to this moment and that Serbia has made a further decisive turn towards the EU after this year's elections. Just before the Serbian elections the EU dangled a carrot in front of the Serbian people's noses: now Serbs will expect a nibble, if not to scoff the whole lot. The carrot was the signing of that would have direct and immediate trade benefits and start the long and laborious process of joining the EU. But it was made clear it couldn't come into effect until there was more co-operation on the delivery of those accused of war crimes. EU foreign ministers are deciding now if that time has come.

Some in Serbia think this helped swing the elections, giving the pro-Europeans the edge. They say it wasn't just the promise that was important, but gave the media something to talk and write about rather than the loss of Kosovo. The carrot, rather than the stick, became the headline.

Things would have been very different if the Radicals had won. But what really changed was forming a government without the previous prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, who has increasingly thrown in his lot with the nationalists. It amazed me when about three years ago I did an interview with the then foreign minister, Vuk Draskovic, who said that they wanted to arrest those accused of war crimes but the police and security forces would not co-operate. Perhaps I was naive, but it is certainly a bad thing in a democracy when the men with the guns don't take orders from the men who get the votes.

People are using the word "milestone" about today and I am pretty certain this is a breakthrough in terms of political will, rather than intelligence or police tactics. How do you see it?

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Flamanville, Normandy, northern France.

Rounding the coast road, as blue-green breakers crash against the dark beaches, you can see a vast building site. It perches on the edge of the sea, on top of old industry, for here there used to be a granite mine and and an undersea iron mine. A few hundred yards out to sea there is a paler expanse of water in the shape of a flattened oval, while overhead scores of gulls hover and swoop on some tasty morsel below.

The site itself resounds with clatters and bangs, men in hard hats wield lengthy pieces of metal, while very tall cranes swing overhead. Two of the cranes are almost entirely encircled in huge concrete tubes, taller than a tower clock.

These oddities are connected, for this is not just any old building site. This is Flamanville Three, where France's latest nuclear reactors are being built. The two cranes wear concrete jackets, to make sure that in the unlikely event they fell over, they wouldn't crash into either of the live reactors next door. And the seabirds are scoffing algae and other goodies forced to the surface by the pressure of the water flowing from the pressurised water reactors.

I am here filming for a piece that will go out at the end of the month, on the . Nuclear power is big in France. It generates a whacking 80% of the country's electricity and President Sarkozy is keen to export the power to neighbouring countries like Spain, which won't build any more nuclear plants themselves.

On the ground before me is the outline in rusty-looking steel of two , which the designers say are "safer, more environmentally friendly and more powerful" than previous models. The plan is that they will come on stream in 2012. It's possible Britain will decided to buy the EPR as well.

From the outline on the ground I can see that the space where the concrete will be poured is very large, perhaps as thick as two or three houses. This the manufacturers claim is what makes it so safe: the concrete shell, they boast, could take the impact of a large plane. They also say that, in what they describe as the very unlikely event of a Chernobyl-style meltdown, all the radioactive fuel would flow back into the centre and into a cooling "swimming pool".

They certainly haven't persuaded all the locals. There is a big anti-nuclear banner hanging from one of the nearby houses. I meet a protester from the area later at an anti-nuclear rally in Paris. He tells me he's not just worried about safety but all the heavy militaristic security that comes with a nuclear plant. People mill around before the march, wearing radiation suits and masks and carrying pictures of children with horrific injuries, although I can't see whether these are victims of Chernobyl or Hiroshima or just generic images of the sort of thing they believe could happen. These people are passionate and demand that France abandon its nuclear programme in favour of renewable energy like wind, wave and solar power and cutting down on consumption.

But most French don't seem disturbed by their reliance on nuclear energy, particularly at a time when the intellectual fashion is swinging back that way, and surely France has gone too far down the track for any change to be politically possible?

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Many of the 44 leaders who came to Paris for the Mediterranean Union summit will make their excuses and leave before the 14 July spectacle. Those who stay may enjoy a little booklet to help them spot the uniforms of the various French troops who will be marching down the Champs Elysees. I know it is the sort of thing I would have not only pored over, but memorised as a ten-year-old. The cloaked and heavily armed amphibious troops of the First Regiment of Spahis, and the bearded Sappers of the Foreign Legion would have been my favourites.

This sort of march-past is extremely rare in Europe, and the only countries in this neck of the woods who mount such displays would be the Turks and the Russians. But of course the French are particularly concerned with demonstrating that they are still a major power in their own right.

President Sarkozy was cock-a-hoop at the end of the meeting. He said his idea and initiative was "an extraordinary concept, and extraordinary gamble". He had asked the leaders of the Arab world to sit in the same room as the Israeli prime minister and the "wager paid off". He said that the real problem of the Middle East was a lack of trust, and he hoped to take a risk and establish that trust.

While it is still not clear why President Sarkozy thought up the idea of the Mediterranean Union in the first place, it's true the first ever summit in Paris this weekend made a real impact, at least in media terms. The Syrian president suggested that diplomatic relations with Lebanon might be established for the first time, and the Israeli prime minister said a deal with the Palestinians had never been closer. The churlish might suggest there was nothing new here. But as one diplomat put it, "freshness is not the point, it's the continuing thaw and it doesn't matter if the mood music is played twice". Statements were made in public and relayed to people round the region that wouldn't have been made without the Paris meeting.

It is certainly higher profile than the already existing "", which set up similar links 13 years ago. But the Med Union will get its own bureaucracy in the form of a yet-to-be-established secretariat, at a yet-to-be-identified location and a joint permanent committee based in Brussels. There are also six concrete projects, with enough detail to keep policy wonks happy for decades to come.

A document that's been given out says that the North and South of the Med share not only interests but also a common destiny, although it is not spelt out what this destiny might be. It points out that the wealth divide between the North and South of the Med is at least 10 to one and that 40 million new jobs will have to be created in the next 15 years just to maintain unemployment at its present level.

The document sets out six big projects:

Combating pollution: The aim is to clean up the Med by 2020 and make it the cleanest sea in the world. There's a suggestion the whole of the seabed could be declared a protected area, there will be a new body to coordinate coastal protection and a more coherent development of projects like whale sanctuaries.

Transport: One potential aim is developing a modern railway network running from Casablanca to Istanbul, and a high-speed rail network linking Libya, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. They also want to promote "motorways of the sea", which basically means modernising ports and integrating sea traffic with road links.

Civil Protection: The development of more coordination and eventually a common emergency response force to cope with earthquakes and fires, floods and drought.

Solar energy: Developing modern, large-scale solar power stations in North Africa and the Middle East to help the European Union meet its low-carbon targets.

Higher education: Greater contact between universities of North and South and common standards for approved courses.

Business: Spreading the Italian/Spanish Med Agency, which helps small businesses with financing to Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia and eventually to the whole region.

Doubtless some of these projects will move along quicker than others, some will work and others will fail. But can the Med Union permanently push the pace on the peace process, or is this first high-profile event a one-off?

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President Sarkozy has greeted the 43 world leaders for a summit that at least looks more successful than many of us expected. He welcomed Mrs Merkel with a hug, Gordon Brown with what could have been a joke and the Turkish leader very quickly, shrugging as he left the platform.

Mr Sarkozy has made this summit about peace in the Middle East. In his main speech before the full meeting he said that the Mediterranean was the source of "all faith, all reason and all culture", that it was there that the first "fraternal civilisation" was built and from there that the religions of the book were born. He said it had created a notion of happiness, wisdom and self-esteem, but also tragedy. It had pushed to the extreme "a zest for life and fascination with death".

His central passage, too grand to be called a soundbite, was: "If this future is to be great, if this future is to be bright, if this future is to be a future of peace, a future of justice and future of progress everyone will have to make an effort, as the Europeans did, to put an end to the deadly spiral of war and violence that, century upon century, sporadically brought barbarity to the heart of civilisation."

I think it was a governor of New York who came up with that great phrase "we campaign in poetry, we govern in prose". Mr Sarkozy is one of those politicians who is full of surprises because he is always campaigning and never abandons poesy.

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Was there a handshake?

It's inevitable, with scores of TV cameras and photographers covering this summit, that there is always a search for a symbolic picture that sums up the mood and any progress made. It's inevitable that today the question was whether there would be a handshake when the Israel prime minister met the Palestinian leader in Paris.

I am not sure whether there was or not, but the real, actual picture probably says more about the relationship between the Israeli PM and the leader of the Palestinian Authority.

President Sarkozy could hardly contain himself before the meeting, seizing the hands of both men and pumping them up and down with a manic energy.

After the meeting the Israeli PM Ehud Olmert was effusive, saying that never before had a deal been so close. It's worth remembering that there are new allegations of corruption against him today and describes him as not so much a "lame duck as a cooked goose". It would not be the first time a leader with domestic troubles suggested he was on the verge of a big breakthrough on the world stage.

Then as the news conference ended the French president again seized their hands and, looking like a man bringing two opposing sets of magnets together, slowly dragged them closer and closer and then performed an operation a bit like a children's pat-a-cake game, until all three were at least holding hands and arguably engaging in a three-way handshake. I've got a feeling that Bill Clinton once did something similar with Rabin and Arafat.

Perhaps there is more accurate symbolism, about the role of "the international community", than the photographers hoped for.

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The French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, detects a "wind of hope" blowing around the Grand Palais in Paris, the giant greenhouse-like structure where the Mediterranean summit is being held. Much of the French press insist however that, the summit, if not the palace, is an empty shell. It is hard to tell.

What has excited the French foreign minister and allowed the French president to utter the words "historic" is an agreement between Syria and Lebanon that for the first time ever they will open embassies in each others' countries.

But Syria's president is playing this down and suggests that this agreement was first reached in 2005, and no new steps had been agreed. Although no Middle East expert, it would seem to me that it would be more important to establish whether Syria still believes it has a right to intervene in Lebanese affairs, up to and including the murder of political opponents. But even the restatement of an agreement, at a high-profile meeting, can't be a bad thing. As one diplomat mused: "Freshness is not important, it's the thawing of relations. There's nothing wrong with playing the mood music twice."

Presumably the reason that there have never been diplomatic relations between the two countries since they were set up in the late 1940s is because, whether formally or informally, Syria regards Lebanon, once a province of Greater Syria under both the Ottoman Empire and the French, as a legitimate part of its sphere of influence, if not its actual territory. And perhaps the French should sort it out, as it was they who were responsible for this particular detail in the carving of nation states out of the old empire. Tell me if I am wrong, I am sure you will.

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"Very nice dear, but what's it for?" After quite a few ups and downs the French president is, this weekend, proudly showing off his shiny new gadget - the Mediterranean Union.

Perhaps we shouldn't expect much from the first ever summit of a new organisation, but it is fair to ask what Mr Sarkozy expects from it. Peace in the Middle East? A half-way house for Turkey? A common approach to seaweed?

It's not exactly clear as the deep blue waters of the Med, although the president, recently described in a very amusing article as "personally unpleasant but extremely energetic", has invested a lot of that energy and suppressed some of the unpleasantness to achieve this get-together.

The Romans knew the sea in the middle of their world as "Mare Nostrum" - Our Sea.
Sarkozy's grand vision of a Mediterranean Union is on one level an attempt to remind Europeans that it is not just "Our Sea". The Med, formed by the clash of European and African tectonic plates, has given its name to a climate, a diet and a temperament that largely stresses a common bond between the people of its northern shores - the French, Spanish, Italians and Greeks - rather than those of North Africa and the Middle East.

Perhaps at the back of Sarkozy's mind is a noble effort to stress the basin's common heritage.

But, as so often with the president's grand projects, one is left wondering whether it is not so much a vision but a momentarily entertaining hallucination, dragged up from goodness knows what regions of the unconscious - a plan without a purpose, an idea, free-floating, unsupported by any specific strategy and undirected towards any particular goal.

The president first played with the theme during his election campaign, when he talked passionately but vaguely about the French role in Algeria, and said that France did not have to be ashamed of its past, as it did not invent the final solution.

Many thought the plan itself was merely a cynical ploy to offer Turkey something less than full European Union membership and rather more than a vague associate partnership.

But alarm bells went off in Berlin and Brussels. The Med was to be seen as "our sea", the EU's sea, not just the private property of those on its shores. Chancellor Angela Merkel does not want France to straddle and dominate two competing organisations. Although it would be fanciful to see the MU as in any way a rival to the EU, she wanted to make sure the stirrings of any such thought of presumed equality were strangled at birth. Britain kept quiet, but diplomats see the Baltic and further expansion to the east as more important than this distraction.

Mrs Merkel won. It was made quite clear that Mr Sarkozy's baby might, like Athena, have sprung fully-formed from his head, but she was to be adopted and tutored by the EU itself. The MU was not to be a separate organisation, but a part of the EU under the already existing framework of what's known as the "".

Mr Sarkozy's original plan for this weekend was very grand indeed. A meeting of just the Med countries, EU and non-EU, to be followed by "the rest of the EU meets the Med" - all fly-pasts and flashing lights to the greater glory of France and her president. There will doubtless be a good deal of that, but the Germans made sure the EU was not decoupled from the MU.

The Med Union wasn't allowed to be a separate organisation that sought to exclude the countries without an olive oil diet or access to fragrant scrubland. Even the Belgians insisted, and they like to think of themselves as honorary Mediterraneans, on the grounds that they have more flair and better food than the Dutch and Germans next door.

Not that it is all sweetness and light from the southern powers. Libya's Colonel Gaddafi has condemned it as a new imperialism, and warns of the Maghreb becoming a colony of Brussels. The Israelis see it as a useful tool. The Algerians are coming along but are cold. Turkey is deeply suspicious.

There's no doubt there are real common projects that could be useful, such as sharing power from solar panels, problems of pollution and over-fishing, that may be given fresh impetus. But perhaps the real purpose is to demonstrate that Sarkozy is at heart a Gaullist, with a determination to show that France is leading Europe, and is still a big player in the world, with a perspective different from some Atlanticist consensus. The political skill would be to make it an unquestioned reality, rather that an exercise in national and personal vanity.

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A Coruna, Spain.

The rough yet nimble fingers of the crew of The New Hunter work a speedy rhythm, darning their maroon nets by the side of their boat, moored in one of Spain's biggest ports. They must be tired. They have been out all night fishing the seas around the extreme North West of Spain. The skippers show me their fine catch still on the boat, packed in boxes of ice. It's mainly sardines, but there's a large sharp-toothed hake and a squid which stains my hands black as I pick it up. I'm told the latter tastes better if beaten against the rocks 16 times by a virgin. There are no volunteers.

But although the night's fishing is done, work isn't over. They now stand in the blazing heat mending their nets. The owner of The New Hunter, Manuel Dominguez, says it didn't used to be like this. He used to make enough money to employ people to mend the nets, but now he can't afford that luxury. Thirty years in the business, and it has come to this. Just a few weeks back there were here, and all over Spain. Now there seems there's no anger left, just resignation. The price of diesel is so high, the price of fish is so low. It's the end of an industry, he says, it's so sad... so sad.

I'm in Spain filming a report for Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Newsnight on EU energy policy. It'll take much of the rest of this month, on and off, so my blogging is going to be a bit more of a snapshot than usual, as I am not yet sure how it will all tie together.

Those dramatic protests in Italy, Spain, France and the UK seem to have just faded away, while the cause of the grievance, mainly the , has of course remained.

One man tells me it's not over yet, and the protest movement will build again. A truck stop in the middle of nowhere seems an odd place to plan a revolution, or even a nationwide protest. On the Esmeralda Road, about 80km (50 miles) from the port, two motorways meet. There is a garage with diesel pumps, a little bar and grill, and a place to wash lorries and service them, and for truck drivers to stay overnight.

That is where we find Antonio Llanos. A brimmed hat perched on his head, stripped down to denim dungarees in the heat, he sits behind his desk in a tiny portakabin, sandwiched between the Hostel Ruta Esmeralda and the bar. He pulls a T-shirt on when we arrive. His computer is none too modern, but the piles of papers and leaflets suggest a tight organisation. He is a regional organiser of the Platform for the Defence of the Transport Sector. It's from here, he says, that Spain was brought to a near-standstill in the recent protests. How did he do it? "New technology, e-mail, sms, mobile phones, bluetooth." But old technology, too. He said their growing plans "spread by word of mouth - sitting down over lunch, drivers decided that they had had enough".

While I want to talk about fuel prices, he is more concerned about big corporations, which he claims are undercutting the minimum wage and employing drivers on the cheap. He says the unions are no good because they protect workers, but truckers are business people. "We got nothing out of it," he admits. But he predicts that there will be more protests in September, with the threat of the breakdown of law and order. After the filmed interview we're talking about Spanish politicians and it's clear he doesn't have time for any of them. He says platforms like his will spring up all over Europe, to defend ordinary people.

I tend to think the protests were an example of political bushfires that spring up and disappear, never to return. I might be wrong. If I am, I'll remember the garage on the Esmeralda Road, where it all started.

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There are the odd political moments when you know an unlovely piece of jargon is going to be the key to a story and you just have to make sure it doesn't slip out between your lips on radio or TV. But you are grown-ups, so I will say to you "prior authorisation". That is going to be the fight ahead over healthcare in the European Union.

The British government's reaction to the were distinctly sniffy in the first place. "The Government is clear that health tourism will not be funded by the ." They later explain by "health tourism" they mean anything not funded by the NHS. The sort of health tourism the commission is talking about is OK. Well, OK-ish.

A colleague back in London interviewed Health Minister Dawn Primarolo for my piece on the Six O'Clock News and she repeatedly and insistently said there would be no change for anyone in Britain because of the new directive. That is of course true at the moment, but will it remain true if it becomes law in its present form?

The commission wants anybody to be able to travel to another EU country, get treatment, and be reimbursed. There are two big caveats. The treatment must be available at home (so no face tucks or nose jobs) and you only get back what it costs at home.

But there is a third caveat lurking in the woodwork. "Prior authorisation." At the moment, in Britain, you have to get permission from the local health authority before you travel for healthcare, if you want to get your money back. The government is absolutely adamant this system must not change. The health minister told my colleague this was because the NHS was based on "entitlement".

But the commission says governments should only impose this condition if the new law unleashes such a huge number of patients wanting treatment abroad that it threatens to send shockwaves through the whole healthcare system. Or, as they put it, "the consequent outflow of patients due to the implementation of the directive seriously undermines, or is likely to seriously undermine, the planning and rationalisation carried out in the hospital sector".

I'm told that's not meant to be taken lightly and governments would be expected to prove their case. Moreover, it would be very difficult to prove the case from day one: there would have to be hard evidence of this "outflow" or patients first.

But hang on. The government's own press release says: "very few people choose to do this (go abroad for treatment), and there has been no significant recent increase in numbers in recent years". So they are presumably admitting that they have no case to demand "prior authorisation".

I suspect the directive will come in for a lot more nobbling before we are done.

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Given that pictures are so important for TV it is perhaps funny that I sometimes form such strong mental images of the people I am going to interview. On my way to Ghent, to film ahead of today's proposals on healthcare, I imagined the Italian gentleman I was going to meet ahead of his hip operation. In my mind's eye he was a rather wizened, bent chap in his 80s, wearing a dark green checked suit and for some reason an alpine hat.

turned out to be rather different - a muscled, vigorous man in his 50s in shorts and a sports vest, who tells me he is an international sportsman, a three-time world karate champion, who it turns out has established his own . But he's done his hips in, and an earlier operation hasn't helped.

So he's come to a clinic along Ghent's leafy millionaire's row to be put right. Now, in Italy, and I presume in most EU countries, you can get hip operations as part of the national health service or its insurance-based equivalent. Ever since 1998 the has been making rulings, on the grounds of free movement, that patients have the right to get their money back for healthcare received abroad within the EU that they could, in theory, have got at home.

But Paolo tells me the Italian government couldn't tell him if he would get at least some of his money back. "I just went there and asked and they said they would have to think about it. They're still thinking. They say they have the summer time, vacations, and lots of things to do. That's the problem." And they didn't want him to have the op before they had made their decision.

"They said: 'You can't have the operation until we give you permission. If you do it first we don't feel like giving you the money'. So I told them the doctor said I needed it urgently. But they said: 'We don't care. You can only go once you have the permission, because of bureaucracy, and we'll tell you in August or September'." So he probably won't get any money, but he will have the operation.

It's exactly to make the rules clearer after all the court cases that the European Commission has been working on new laws. In fact they have been working on them for five years now. Their plans were meant to be unveiled just before Christmas, when I wrote a couple of articles about the ideas. But the directive was pulled at the last minute, apparently because of objections by the left and some nation states.

We will know the exact details later today, but it will still say that member states have to reimburse the cost of any healthcare that would be provided in their own country, but in the case of hospital care they can insist that the patient gets approval from the relevant authority if "member states can provide evidence that the outflow of patients resulting from the implementation of this directive has such an impact that it serious undermines the planning and rationalisation carried out in the hospital sector".

Whatever this means I am sure many governments will try to prove that their planning would be seriously undermined, so they keep control of the situation.
A lobby group for patients' consumer choice, , very much welcomes the plans. But one of its directors, Kajsa Wilhelmsson, says they have been watered down. For instance, a reference to getting your money back in three weeks has totally disappeared.

"It means that you will potentially have to wait for a very long time before you are reimbursed. Can all patients really afford that? I would doubt it. You might know how much it will cost, but you wouldn't necessarily know when you would get the money back, and you would have to pay upfront in several countries for the care given."

She thinks many governments are just frightened of the plans. "I think they're a bit scared of this, as it will give more powers to the patient and transform healthcare by increasing the transparency in different quality of care in different countries and they will be pointed out that maybe they are not as good as they claim to be."

Bu others think they are right to be scared. The former UK Health Secretary, Frank Dobson, told me: "Matters to do with healthcare systems are supposed to be a responsibility of national governments, but the European Court and the Commission have decided to poke their nose in and they shouldn't be doing it. And if there are benefits from it for people in Britain they'll go to people who are better off, because they will be able to afford to go to get treatment somewhere in Europe, rather than in Britain. And also people will be allowed to top up the cost. If they persist in pushing this I think Gordon Brown should just tell them to stuff it."

Back in Ghent, Paolo is preparing for life after today's operation. An expert not only in unarmed combat but also oriental weapons, I catch him experimentally twirling his crutches. Maybe the Italian government should take note, and pay up.

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How important is the with a newspaper stating that at the moment it is "pointless" to sign the Lisbon Treaty? Our man on the ground Adam Easton tells me that the constitution says that if parliament ratifies a treaty, as it has done, then the president must sign the ratification to bring it into force. But the constitution does not specify a time limit.

If the government wanted to push things they could take him to the state tribunal - but that is unlikely.

So at the moment, he can refuse to sign until or unless political pressure on him becomes too strong.

But if anyone has any other view on the legal position I would love to hear your thoughts.

My own feeling is that if the Irish are "persuaded" to vote again it is very much a side issue. But if the Irish government won't call for another vote, and other countries start to get heavy with them, it becomes very important indeed: the battle would then be between those who want to kill Lisbon and those who want to move on without Ireland.

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The French take over the rolling six-month presidency of the European Union today, and the Eiffel Tower has been lit up to mark the occasion.

The French presidency has so many "priorities" that it almost seems indecent: new proposals on defence, immigration, energy, the environment and agriculture among them.

It rather reminds me of when David Miliband first became UK foreign secretary and found that the Foreign Office had something like 14 priorities. He rightly remarked that if there were 14 of them they couldn't be priorities.

The priorities of a new presidency rarely seem to have much to do with what they actually achieve during their time in the hot seat.

Of course President Sarkozy's real priority will be dealing with the aftermath of the Irish No.

But just as high on his list seems to be undermining the . Following his remark at the recent summit he has now called a special foreign ministers' meeting on 18 July. Mr Mandelson will have to report to that meeting and the old deep divide between protectionists and free traders will be on display. Mr Mandelson may boast of "broad shoulders and a thick skin", but this hardly rings true to those who know him. But even a politician less sensitive to criticism might be rather cross that in the middle of delicate negotiations a key player is rubbishing his agreed approach.

Now an apology: 1OUTAT27 is quite right to point out a mistake in "Irish no under scrutiny": I misread a table and wrote that 52% voted No because they didn't understand the treaty. It was in fact 22%. The 52% refers to the number of those who DIDN'T vote, and their reason. Sorry.

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