Like the EU, Britain said it would simply hand much of its increased aid to Mr Kibaki's government, rather than funding projects run by charities.
"We would like the EU to focus on completion of the single market, where there are still absurd barriers in everything from architecture to the legal profession, " he added.
This latest Greek debt restructuring episode is just like the entire EU sovereign debt crisis it drags on as more meetings are held, and then drags on some more as still more meetings are held.
FORBES: A.M. Kitco Metals Roundup: Comex Gold Firmer Amid Risk-On Investor Mentality Friday
Like the song contest, the EU, which will grow from 15 to 25 members next year, cannot continue under a creaking institutional framework that was originally designed for a much smaller number of participants.
Speaking in London and not in Amsterdam as originally planned, the prime minister will argue that a straight in or out referendum on our membership of the EU - like the one held in 1975 - should be held but not now or before the next election.
They claim that the latter group includes Arab dictatorships like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and democracies like Turkey, the EU, and Israel.
Some British eurosceptics, including Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan, have argued that the UK should be like Norway, outside the EU, but according to this report Norway is both "outside and inside" the EU and just "one or two steps behind".
Mr Sarkozy has indicated that he would like the sales tax brackets within the EU to be reviewed.
Merkel has suggested she would like to see the EU have the right to interfere in national budgets in extreme cases where euro zone stability is put at risk.
Meanwhile there are a number of local battles with smaller parties like the Greens and the anti-EU UK Independence Party fighting hard to capitalise on disillusion with the big three parties.
However, it is no coincidence that in these times of crisis those forces, who - like most British - would like to reduce the EU to a free trade area have been strengthened.
Last week in this column, I wrote about the dangers of admitting countries into organizations like the European Union (EU) when their economies are so weak that membership only adds to the already dangerous liabilities looming over multiple nations in an interconnected global economy.
The challenge will be in maintaining relations with allies who will not leave the EPP, but think like us on climate change, EU spending or free trade - parties like the Swedish Moderates, or the Dutch Christian Democrats.
It would be a mistake for the leaders of Spain and Italy to assume that if they got into trouble they might be bailed out like Greece: neither the EU nor the IMF could afford it.
The EU is like one of those benign but stern creators that reach out of the clouds in Renaissance masterpieces.
Instead of thinking about arming the opposition, the EU, like everyone else, should be channelling its efforts in a different direction.
CNN: Syrian arms embargo: Why more weapons to Syria is a mistake
French MEP Alain Lamassoure told the BBC's Daily Politics that the EU was like a family, with "goods pupils and bad pupils".
EU. Like the Netherlands, France is one of the six founders, and also one of the 12 that have joined the single European currency, the euro.
Quoting a Tory peer, he told Mr Ancram his party's policy on opting out of bits of the EU was like going into McDonalds and ordering lobster thermidor.
Unlike Britain, France has always been politically (and geographically) central to the EU. Like the Netherlands, France is one of the six founders, and also one of the 12 that have joined the single European currency, the euro.
It is also worse outside the EU, especially in countries like Ukraine that now feel they have no chance of EU membership.
President Nicolas Sarkozy suggested that Luxembourg, the home of the EU's justice commissioner, might like to provide the Romanies with homes.
He stressed that the UK had been "at the heart of decision making" on important issues like sanctions and EU enlargement, and "we wrote the rules of the single market and benefit from it today".
Javier Solana, the so-called "High Representative" of the EU -- in effect its foreign policy supreme -- is working on the command structure and seeking to ease the worries of countries like Turkey, currently in NATO but not in the EU, that they will be squeezed out of future decisions on European security.
Unless a new commission is agreed before then, you end up with a caretaker administration, which would for example be unable to take big decisions on things like the state aid investigation into Opel, or speak for the EU at the Copenhagen climate change summit with their usual authority.
Had that been held, and had Montenegro seceded from the federation, the EU feared that others in the region, like Albanian leaders in Kosovo and Macedonia, as well as Serbs in Bosnia, could have been encouraged to make similar moves towards independence - something the West is keen to avert.
But the association's voluntary aspect, along with the fact that it cannot impose sanctions for non-compliance like other international blocs such as the UN and EU, have led to criticisms that it lacks bite.
BBC: Commonwealth of Nations: 'The club of the 21st Century'
For the EU Commission might like to think that it has all sorts of power over Google.
FORBES: Links 23 Feb: Google's Streaming Music, Google's Crime Fighting
The refugee agency would like EU countries to live up to their promise to adopt a more coherent Europe-wide asylum policy, she says.
应用推荐