This WEEK in the European Union

EUOBSERVER

22.01.2010 @ 17:57 CET

EUOBSERVER / WEEKLY AGENDA (25-31 January 2010) - The week will be kicked off by a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday where the Haiti earthquake and the EU's relief efforts will be the main issue on the agenda.

There will also be a discussion on sending EU gendarmes to the Caribbean island. France last week suggested that 1000 such gendarmes be sent but governments have still to agree on the details and whether they will contribute, with five member states taking part in the European Gendarmerie Force. Last week the EU agreed to give €118 million in new funds to Haiti, bringing the total amount with already earmarked cash to over €400 million.

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Iran will also be on the agenda as member states consider how to the EU can put more pressure on Tehran to end its controversial nuclear programme.

The ministers' meeting comes six weeks after EU leaders issued a statement at a summit in Brussels in December saying the bloc would be prepared to back UN sanctions on the issue. They asked foreign ministers "to consider options for next steps to this end" at Monday's meeting. The EU already has some sanctions in place including an assets freeze on some of individuals linked to the nuclear programme.

War-torn Somalia will also be up for discussion as member states look for political agreement on sending a small contingent of EU troops to train Somali forces in Uganda.

The African country, without a stable government since 1991, has been wracked by civil wars and has lately been even more under the spotlight since pirates working off the Somali coast started hijacking ships, attracting world wide attention. The EU is heading an anti-piracy mission in the Gulf of Aden, but diplomats ahead of the Monday meeting said the piracy problem has to be solved by tackling the country itself.

The European Commission on Wednesday will publish its assessments on whether Latvia, Lithuania, Malta and Hungary have taken effective action to reduce their budget deficits, with public debt ballooning in several member states as they deal with the effects of the financial crisis.

The European Parliament, meanwhile, will be host to six government ministers from Spain, currently holding the EU rotating presidency, who will brief sectoral committees on Madrid's policy intentions for the next five months.

EU development commissioner Karel de Gucht will appear before the development committee on Monday to brief MEPs on the situation in Haiti following his visit last week, while Serge Bammertz, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, will on Tuesday update the foreign affairs committee on his work, which is crucial to the EU aspirations of Croatia and Serbia.

The foreign affairs committee will also hear former US secretary of state Madelaine Albright, who is in charge of a group reviewing Nato's strategic concept. Nato and the future of EU defence are closely interwined with most EU states belonging the alliance, creating potential strategic overlap and a potential stretch in military capacity.