It said talks could only take place with an EU member state when there was a was a "precise scenario" to discuss.
Some areas are stalemated: the EU has frozen several chapters of the talks, and Turkey refuses to recognise Cyprus, an EU member state.
It helps, of course, that Norway is not an EU member state and that Denmark and Sweden currently do not use the euro currency.
The Cyprus setting for the gathering is especially notable as the island EU member state offers Europe the clearest shot at the offshore gas reserves.
On the one hand, the European Central Bank has agreed that it will not discriminate against any EU member state in the way that it uses its supervisory powers.
Less than 30 miles from end to end, Malta is an archipelago in miniature whose crinkled coastline fits in as much Mediterranean blue as possible in this, the smallest EU member state.
Under EEJ-Net, a UK consumer who, for example, had a claim against a trader in another EU member state would be able to approach the UK clearing house, which would obtain information from its opposite number in the other country about any suitable out of court scheme operating there.
Turkey's relations with EU member-state Cyprus are one obstacle, along with opposition to Turkish membership within other EU states, correspondents say.
If someone from one EU member states dies in an EU state that is not their home country, inheritance issues would be dealt with under the law of the member state where they last had their "place of habitual residence".
It could be portrayed as EU bullying of a small member state, especially as French and Dutch voters had previously rejected the constitution, and were not asked to vote again.
Only about 3% of the EU workforce is employed in another member state, figures from 2012 show.
Greece is also a member State of the EU (since 1981), therefore EU law covers a large part of internal law.
Opening the debate, the parliament's negotiator on the regulation, German centre-right MEP Kurt Lechner said that 12 million EU citizens live in a different member state.
It gave the EU a formal solidarity role - meaning an EU state under attack would be guaranteed assistance by other member states.
The key issue, therefore, relates to an independent Scotland's membership of the EU. As outlined, an independent Scottish state could not automatically become a new member of the EU upon independence because there is no explicit provision for this process in the EU's own membership rules.
He said the directive's reporting process for each member state would mean tighter EU Commission monitoring of energy efficiency performance.
The European Commission has given Croatia the green light to join the EU on 1 July as the 28th member state.
Under the EU plan announced on Friday, 2, 250 processed beef samples will be tested across the EU, ranging from 10 to 150 per member state.
Under the changes, a self-employed worker who contributes to the social security system in one EU country, and then moves to another member state that does not have unemployment insurance for the self-employed will be able to claim unemployment benefit from the country where the worker was last based before becoming unemployed.
When the Commission believes a member state has failed to account properly for EU funds it can impose a "correction" on that state - it is a demand to reimburse the Commission.
Delegates have been keeping one eye on the EU talks in Brussels, where heads of state from member countries reached agreement on their energy and climate "package", although it has yet to be ratified by the European Parliament.
By contrast to the USA, where economic resources are, by and large, amassed by genuine entrepreneurs and allocated by market forces, in EU, economic resources are amassed by Brussels and member-state governments acting as entrepreneurs, allocating those resources by political process.
The investigations were overseen by the Article 29 Working Party, a group of representatives from each member state tasked with promoting the application of the EU's Data Protection Directive.
Marco Simoni, political economist at the European Institute of the LSE, believes a "slow decay" of member state economies is the biggest risk to the EU and countries should not assume they are immune from financial collapse as soon as they sign up.
In mid-December the European Council, which comprises the heads of state and government of the EU's 27 member states, had disappointed Turkey by endorsing the conclusions of an earlier meeting of EU foreign ministers, which criticised the limited progress Turkey had made on political reform in 2007 and warned that long-awaited reforms in the areas of freedom of expression and religion should not be delayed any further.
Despite the concerns over language, MEPs were broadly supportive of the rules on mutual recognition and called for the time taken to recognise the qualifications of EU professionals such as doctors and engineers applying to work in another member state to be sped up.
EU, a company that wants to introduce a genetically modified seed approaches a member state to act as rapporteur.
It is a single set of rules that companies operating within the EU could use to calculate their taxable profits, rather than different rules in each member state in which they operate.
According to Vitor Bento, a former Treasury Secretary and a member of the council of state which advises Portugal's president, it is now clear the EU's "piecemeal" approach to indebted countries cannot work.
EU-wide criteria would make clear which country's legal system applies when an inheritance concerns more than one member state, a move designed to reduce costly legal disputes and cut red tape for heirs.
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