Russian and EU leaders will gather in Rostov-on-Don for their bi-annual summit on 31 May ? 1 June. The geographical symbolism is not good: Rostov is only a few kilometres from Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The political mood leading up to the summit seems a little better.

29 May is the 5th anniversary of the French ?non? to the EU constitution. The Dutch followed with a ?nee? a few days later. Richard Gowan paints a bleak picture of the Europe that might have emerged had the French and Dutch backed the EU constitution in 2005, and asks: Will the EU never be happy?

Pre-occupied with its financial troubles, the EU is no longer paying attention to the Western Balkans. As a result it is losing credibility and influence in a region that may slide back towards instability.

Catherine Ashton will be judged on how she responds to her first international emergency. Budget cuts might mean there will be less EU missions to crisis zones under her watch. So where will her first opportunity come from? Africa, the Middle East, or a crisis involving Russia?

Spain seriously needs to review its priorities in public expenditure, and its attitudes toward education. Otherwise it will go on being that country which a former German foreign minister called "a beautiful country, full of four lane divided highways with no cars on them."

The historic reordering of British politics has been overshadowed by the world?s worst financial crisis in generations. The rest of Europe waits to see what David Cameron will do.

The Ukrainian pendulum is swinging in the direction of Moscow. This is not necessarily just because of gas or economics. It could also be because Kiev feels Russia is a better long-term bet than the West, and that should be worrying a lot of people.

What's the verdict on the EU-Latin American summit, held in Spain earlier this week? For one thing: Latin American matters to Europe. And trade seems to have been a winner too.

The present type of EU summit with international actors ought to change, otherwise we will be perpetuating a type of encounter that is closer to circus than to diplomacy, and where it is hard to tell who are the lions and who are the tamers.

What is defence really for and what should Europe do after defence budgets have been ravaged by the economic crisis? In the second of a two part series of podcasts, Daniel Korski talks to Nick Witney about how European security will have to be rethought from the ground up after the economic crisis - and how the best option might be to become a spikey, hedgehog-like larger version of Switzerland.

The European Commission?s budget monitoring proposals are sensible, but to succeed they must be firmly rooted in the democratic procedures of member states.

Forget reputations. Britain's new coalition government of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats will temper its foreign policy approach with a healthy dose of pragmatism.

The Euro crisis shows again that the EU needs international institutions like the IMF. This is giving observers from the developing world grim satisfaction that Europe is not as exceptional as it might like to think.

Of all the problems facing Europe, one seems very difficult to solve: demographic forecasts, added to political ones, point to a Europe without Europeans.

The tragic plane crash in Smolensk has brought Russia and Poland closer together. Emotions aside, what do they both want to gain from the rapprochement?