They consider a European Turkey an opportunity to develop their own relations with the EU.

Under the Treaty of Rome, Ukraine, as a European country, qualifies as a potential EU member.

Today, those in France who opposed the EU constitution succeeded in stigmatizing Europe as the threat.

Sarkozy regards an EU economic government as a way to preserve his leadership in the EU beyond France s Council presidency, which is now ending.

The US has been the other woman undermining Britain s loyalty to the EU as an attractive permanent partner.

Formed originally as a free trade area, the eurozone comprises 17 of the countries.

To be sure, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia have rightly viewed EU accession as an act of political emancipation, and have begun asserting themselves as political equals.

It also brought to a sorry close the UK s six month presidency of the European Council, confirming Britain s long standing reputation as the odd man out in the European Union.

There is a collective responsibility to treat such problems not as Muslim issues, but as problems whose solutions will enhance the values on which European society is based.

So it is hard for Europeans to understand why plans for closer European integration should be seen as anti American.

The EMP evolved in 2004 into the European Neighborhood Policy framework, and in 2007, the European Neighborhood Policy Instrument (ENPI) replaced MEDA as the EU s main financing mechanism for Euro Mediterranean policy.

The US has been the other woman undermining Britain s loyalty to the EU as an attractive permanent partner. As a result, Britain has lost much of its ability to make an effective contribution to European reform.

In the eyes of some neighboring countries, Russia is emerging as an ideological alternative to the EU that offers a different approach to sovereignty, power, and world order.

Critics view it as a devious attempt to circumvent the prohibition on the ECB s direct purchases of eurozone governments bonds.

Moreover, with the disappearance of the Soviet Union as a common threat, Europe s left wing parties are increasingly defining themselves as anti American.

The Central European Gas Hub (CEGH) is established as an important gas trading platform on the gas routes from East to West and also operates a gas exchange.

So it is past time that the European Union stopped treating energy as a bilateral issue, with some of the larger member states trying to protect their own narrow interests at the expense of the common European good.

While China is not about to dominate these institutions, in southern Africa it is regarded as a potential counterweight to the US and the EU.

The European Central Bank clearly has the technical and analytical capacity to take on general supervision of European banks, using the member central banks as information conduits.

But, in these times of economic uncertainty, EU governments should view a common energy policy as an opportunity to be seized.

They must take concrete steps, with Greece as a full and equal partner, to create a vision of real rewards from a rejuvenated EU.

Sarkozy, for example, has revived a long standing French argument for some form of economic government in Europe as a counterweight to the ECB.

The EU s eastern policy should not be seen as philanthropy, but as a strategy promoting clear cut pan European interests.

The EU cannot let Cyprus stew in its own juice, not least because as a member state the island is proving an uncomfortable bedfellow.

Most EU members view these as open questions, unlikely to be resolved soon.

If the European Court of Justice, for example, were to strike down the European Union (EU) mechanism because the system is deemed to violate due process, it might not alter EU member States' obligations to the United Nations to enforce the sanctions, but it would make it much more difficult for them to do so.

This would allow the European Banking Authority to treat these various T bills as the equivalent of cash, because they could be sold to the ECB at any time.

By an accident of bureaucratic timing, the EaP is seen by many in the east as merely the EU s response to the global economic crisis, not as a strategy tailored for the region.

But these bodies must not be seen as substitutes for the far more comprehensive accession process, which only the EU itself can initiate.

Europe currently exists as an economic actor, not as an international political actor.

Vital European and transatlantic interests are at stake. It is thus Europe s responsibility and especially Germany s, as the current EU president to act now.

The ECB s treatment of all such debt as equally powerful sources of back up liquidity now trumps any analysis of differences in long term sovereign risk.

Europe should go beyond defining its relationship with Ukraine as a neighbor it should clearly state that Ukraine has a realistic chance of entry into NATO and the EU.

I wish France could adopt a more humble attitude, show more respect for its partners and the EU's institutions, and view Europe as more than an extension of its own philosophy.

Traits have come to be seen as consistent patterns of personality rather than inherited characteristics.

Tolerance becomes the cardinal European virtue in this vision, and the EU s character as an entity with federal law but without federal statehood is viewed as a strength, not a weakness.

The Quartet (the US, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations) used to be regarded as One plus Three, but that is no longer the case.

The scandal looked like an obvious weapon to be used in the war of rival models of business organization critics portrayed Parmalat as the latest manifestation of a crisis of European style family capitalism.

Her style since arriving in Brussels as the EU s foreign policy chief has been distinctly unassuming, but that does not mean that she cannot now show her mettle and seize the initiative.

Likewise, German legal scholars interpret the ECB s activities as being incompatible with European treaty provisions that prohibit bailouts and monetary financing of the debt of eurozone members.

Neither France nor Britain not to mention the European Union, which is more divided than ever when it comes to military interventions can be seen as substitutes for the US.

Europe has an international image problem that in part stems from a complex institutional structure that non EU countries find baffling.

Most Europeans do not perceive Turkey as a European Other but as a non European Other.

Many Russians do not regard Europe as a political and economic partner, or even as an ally.

So why the high alarm about European appeasement, especially among the neo conservatives? Why the easy equation of Islamism with Nazism?