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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