EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - By 2025, the European Union will be a "hobbled giant" crippled by internal bickering and a eurosceptic citizenry. Eastern European organised crime could dominate one or more member state governments, and the bloc will likely be kowtowing to Moscow after having failed at all attempts to wean itself from Russian energy supplies.

The EU will have completed its institutional reforms, but will remain weak on the world stage, warns the NIC

This is the rosy view for Europe's future mapped out by the United States National Intelligence Council (NIC), Washington's main intelligence body. This agency of agencies, formed in 1979, brings together analysis from each of America's multiple intelligence organisations to develop mid- to long-term strategic thinking for the country's security community.

Every four years, the NIC peers into its crystal ball and produces a global trends review - a prediction of what the world will look like in around 15 years' time.

This year's report, Global Trends 2025: A World Transformed, foresees the EU in 2025 as likely having completed its institutional reforms and consolidated itself as a political entity, but infighting between member states with competing domestic interests and a European public alienated by a perceived democratic deficit will leave it a "hobbled giant", with massive economic heft but little genuine international power.

France's Socialist party will today hold a run-off vote for its next leader, as Ségolène Royal and Martine Aubry battle to become the first woman to head the biggest party on the French left.

In the initial vote yesterday, first place went to Royal, the former presidential candidate who is promising to modernise the troubled and divided party.

Despite a campaign by party heavyweights and members of the old guard, who dismissed Royal as a would-be messianic figure with a Joan of Arc complex, damaged by losing the last presidential election, she took 43% of the vote. But it was not a big enough majority to win outright.

Aubry, the mayor of Lille and architect of France's 35-hour week, came second with 34%. The MEP Benoit Hamon took 22% and was knocked out of the next round.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili demanded Thursday that his Caucasus republic be offered a timetable showing what it must do to qualify for membership in NATO.

Saakashvili was in Munich paying his first visit to Germany since his nation's war with Russia this summer.

"Not offering Georgia a plan of action leading to membership will send the wrong signal to the wrong people," he said.

Russia has strongly opposed Georgia being absorbed into NATO, insisting that the former Soviet republic is within its sphere of influence.

Timetables, or membership action plans, offer new entrants a transition period to reshape their military institutions to NATO standards. Both Georgia and Ukraine are believed to be on the cusp of receiving MAPs.

France's detention policies risk undermining Europe's standing on human rights, a European human rights commission report said Thursday.

Convicts serving time inside French prisons had to deal with overcrowding, a lack of privacy, dilapidated facilities and substandard hygiene, the Council of Europe's Human Rights Commissioner Thomas Hammarberg said in the report, which followed an inspection of the French detention system in May.

He said the fundamental rights of prisoners had to be respected and that France needed to come up with more effective solutions to these problems and, importantly, more funding, especially for inmates with mental disorders.

"Dangerousness, on the basis of which preventive detention is ordered, is not a clear legal or scientific concept," he said. "Harsh measures have to be applied in some circumstances in order to protect society, but their use should not become routine.

"They must remain the last resort and other recidivism prevention measures should be applied in the first instance."

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The rapidly melting Arctic is a bonanza of oil, gas, fish and mineral wealth waiting to be exploited - so long as it is done in a sustainable manner, the European Commission believes.

Faster transit routes, including the fabled Northwest Passage sought by explorers for centuries, and expanded possibilities for polar tourism also provide exciting opportunities for businesses, according to the EU executive, which on Thursday

"We cannot remain impassive in the face of the alarming developments affecting the Arctic climate and, in consequence, the rest of our planet," said fisheries commissioner Joe Borg, while speaking to reporters after the publication of the policy document.

"The Arctic is an essential and vulnerable component of the Earth's ecosystem," echoed his colleague, external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Walder. "The effects of climate change are more advanced and more evident in the Arctic than in any other area of the world."

But this is no reason not to exploit the region, they both argued.

The Swedish parliament late on Thursday (20 November) adopted the Lisbon treaty by a sweeping majority, becoming the 23rd EU country to ratify the text.

The treaty was passed by 243 votes against 39 at 23:30 local time, with 13 abstentions and 54 deputies absent from the 349-seat legislature, the Riksdag.

The old town in Stockholm

The opposition Left Party and Green Party had tried to build a 48-vote blocking minority to put off ratification for one year. But the four parties in the centre-right government coalition and the main Social Democrat opposition party pushed through the EU document.

The long debate, which started at noon and saw 36 members take the floor, concentrated on Sweden's collective labour agreements and transfer of sovereignty.

"Why can't Sweden ask for a legally-binding exemption for the collective bargaining model?" Left Party deputy Hans Linde asked, Swedish daily Aftonbladet reports.

EUOBSERVER / STRASBOURG - Member states need to assume more responsibility in correctly managing EU funds and follow up what happens in the national courts to the fraud cases investigated by the block's antifraud office (OLAF), commissioner Siim Kallas has told EUobserver.

With both the Court of Auditors and OLAF identifying structural funds - in which "member states decide who gets the money", he says - as those that are the most prone to irregularities and fraud, audit reporting from national governments is a necessary step to increase countries' responsibility in regards to EU funds, Mr Kallas said.

Commissioner Siim Kallas says OLAF's institutional arrangement is "schizophrenic"

He was speaking ahead of a debate in the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Thursday (20 November) on the latest Court of Auditors report, where MEPs also called on member states to be "named and shamed" for the errors and fraud with EU funds.

Asked why only a few OLAF cases were followed up by the national judiciaries, Mr Kallas replied: "The priorities of national judiciaries are very different from the priority of handling European money."

"The European Parliament, the commission and the Council are all asking for vigorous action. But these actions are the competence of national judiciaries, which have enormous workloads," he explained.

The UN Security Council has extended the European Union's peacekeeping mission in Bosnia for one year. Since the war, the country has been under international administration, first under NATO and now under the EU.

The resolution was approved unanimously late Thursday, Nov. 20, and welcomed the EU's intention to retain its 2,100-strong military presence, known as EUFOR, in the country.

The Council also reminded Bosnia's Muslims, Serbs and Croats that it is primarily their responsibility to implement the Dayton peace agreement that ended the 1992-1995 war.

Amsterdam is being forced to close 43 of its 228 cannabis-selling cafes to meet national regulations. The establishments, including the world famous Bulldog, are simply too close to highschools.

Amsterdam is being forced to close 43 of its 228 cannabis-selling cafes to meet national regulations, Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen announced Friday at the presentation of a memorandum on the city's drugs policy.

[...]

In an interview, Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen makes it clear that he is following the government's directive under duress. "It is possible that moving the coffee shops further away [from schools] will result in street trade and a growing number of drug runners. Young people could have easier access to drugs and it could also mean more work for the police," Cohen said.

Like the majority of mayors in towns where coffee shops sell cannabis, Cohen is happy with the existing policy on soft drugs but would like to see regulation of the whole cannabis trade. "I want an equal policy for soft drugs and alcohol," Cohen said.

The university professor was detained in connection with the opinion that he had expressed during a debate about the development of the Latvian economy and the future of the banking and credit system of Latvia, which was published in Ventspils' local newspaper Ventas Balss. The Mayor of Ventspils Aivars Lembergs also participated in the discussion.

"What happened is absurd. We wanted to find out an expert's opinion. He is competent and courageous, he has a degree, the knowledge and the experience," Imants Viksne of Ventas Balss commented on the detention of Smirnovs.